A District Upside Down: The War
by Lorata
Summary: When Brutus fell, the hovercraft team who retrieved his corpse fought to resuscitate him, refusing to stand by and watch their hero die. They're recruited by a second rebellion, split from District 13, to fight against both the Capitol and District 13 - and maybe turn the tide. A canon divergence AU where District 2's Victors have a chance of making it out alive. [COMPLETE]
1. Chapter 1

**[UPDATE SCHEDULE: updates monthly around the middle of each month]**

* * *

Brutus dies for his country like a good Two. He dies in the jungle, dies in the dirt and the leaves and the tangle of vines, dies with a snake slithering through the underbrush near his head. Dies with his limbs twitching and jerking and flailing, dies with his body failing around him, shutting down in pieces here and there like a broken machine. Dies with his hand on his heart and the eyes of his district watching him through the cameras.

Dies with the sour taste of regret in his mouth. Dies pricked with the sting of shame because he is Two and loyalty and honour and duty and passion and a hundred other things that dissolved like ashes on his tongue and in the end meant absolutely nothing because death is death is death and it means nothing, it all means nothing, and why, why, why him, he was supposed to be safe, they were supposed to love him back -

Brutus dies, exhausted and in pain and alone, leaking and spasming and broken, a tin soldier tossed into the fire and melted down.

He dies —

* * *

It's the day before the start of the 75th Hunger Games. Most of the Capitol citizens are at Games-parties; they'll cluster in bars and hotels and houses and drink and watch recaps and work themselves into a titter. Those in the Districts will be more careful; they'll be watching the broadcast at home, maybe in the Reaping Squares if they're keen, but they'll be watching.

The tributes will be preparing for the interviews, or maybe trying to get some sleep after the final private training session; the mentors will be trying to work out last-minute strategies, cutting sponsorship deals, anything to give their kids an edge.

The Peacekeeper Scouts are prepping, too, but in an entirely different way.

Selene waits in the briefing room with her squadmates and the handful of other elite Scout teams that make up President Snow's private, elite force, standing or sitting in tense silence. Most of the Scouts have known each other for years; the newer members, like Selene and her partner Dash, have less of a rapport outside their own squads, but even with that, Scout gatherings are a place of long-standing camaraderie and friendly teasing. Today, though, the room feels dark, almost oppressive.

The door bangs open and Captain Emin strides into the room. Her expression is tight and unhappy, just like it's been for the last eternity since the 75th Games season started and all the Scouts were recalled to the Capitol.

At Selene's side, Dash shifts uncomfortably. This is only their second Games as Peacekeepers, and maybe that means they lack perspective, but the atmosphere at last year's briefing was … brisk, businesslike. Not like this. Selene glances sideways at Rigel and Marius, her team's senior scouts; their expressions are similarly grim.

"Assignments for tomorrow," Emin announces without preamble, which is also not like it was last year. No welcome, no pep talk, nothing about the honour and privilege of serving at such a grand event. Not that Selene really needed one, but that's not the point. "First up, tribute duty."

Emin taps the console and a display springs to life. Twenty-four light craft will go out tomorrow morning to take the Vic- — _tributes_ , Selene reminds herself, _they're tributes_ — to the Arena, the biggest simultaneous undertaking of the year. Each craft has a number and letter designation marking the tribute it will carry: no names, not here, and especially not now in a room full of ex-Careers who have idolized the Victor-tributes their whole lives.

"Those of you with your name next to a craft, report in at oh-five-hundred tomorrow."

Snapping back to attention, Selene registers that she and Dash are in one craft, Marius and Rigel in another. The four of them are usually sent up together, but for this transport duty – and given the number of Peacekeepers required to man each craft – they'll be split up, at least for the first day. Later on, when they run cover duty, they'll be working together again.

"First shift." Emin taps another button, and another set of names flickers onto the screen. "Dag, Brin, Lena, Garen, your teams will be on standby for the start." That's deliberate too — those are the most experienced scout teams; there's not a Peacekeeper with under ten years' experience in any of those four-man teams.

Selene doesn't envy them. They'll be the ones pulling bodies out of the bloodbath. Familiar bodies.

Emin continues, "Given the … state of things, it is imperative that tomorrow goes off as smoothly as possible." From the tightness in her expression, the wording isn't her own. "Following that, we'll rotate by shifts." Everyone nods. "Report to your stations. And –" Emin hesitates, then says, very softly. "I won't pretend this is just another year. But – we have our duty. Do it, do it well. Let's go, people."

A few days later, the Games routine has settled into an uneasy rhythm. Selene and her team are back together, assigned to night duty –- "because we got the afternoon shift last year," Marius says with a wry smile – and so far it's been pretty boring. In most years the night shift is when the action happens, because that's when the Careers hunt, but this time the main alliance has done most of its movement during the day.

But tonight -

"Something's happening tonight," Dash says, frowning at the scanner. It's linked to the central console the Gamemakers use, showing where each tribute is currently located; it's how the hovercraft teams know where to pick up tributes when they fall. "Look here -–" he taps the screen as Selene leans over, enlarging the view "— they're on the move."

"Back to the tree?" Selene asks.

At the hand-over, the afternoon shift had reported the Everdeen-and-friends alliance had gone haring off to the big tree nearest their station, but had returned to the beach in short order. Best guess is, they were scouting ... but for what, nobody knows.

Dash nods. "And B- the Twos are on the move, too. Intercept course, looks like."

"Okay." Rigel runs a hand through his hair. "Okay. Keep an eye out and be ready to go when something happens. They're planning something tonight; we'll need to respond fast."

Marius nods, unhappily. So do Selene and Dash.

Despite that, a few hours pass without incident. They all abandon all pretence of waiting calmly and hover around the scanner, watching the dots move around. And then —

"Eleven Male is down." Dash announces unnecessarily, as the cannon booms over the Arena. "Just inside our sector."

"Call it in," Rigel says instantly, snatching up his helmet. They don't need to go yet – they usually wait for the dust to clear before going on a pickup – but honestly any excuse for being in the area is a good one, especially since the tag nearest 11M when it winked out was 2M.

"Yes _sir_ ," Selene says, grabbing her own helmet.

They're up in the air in under a minute, Rigel at the helm, and are halfway to Chaff when another cannon fires. Marius swears, loudly. "Fuck!"

Selene's on her feet before she quite knows what's going on. Marius – big, quiet Marius – almost never swears. Dash, surprised but not being possessed of Selene's reflexes, merely looks startled. "What –" Selene begins.

"Brutus just went down," Marius snaps. Selene's world freezes. "Fuck! Go –"

The craft tilts abruptly and dives, Rigel throwing it onto a new course for their Victor – their tribute? – no, Brutus is and has always been their Victor. Selene grabs at the controls for the claw, spinning it up even before they swing into position —

Then Marius is unbuckling his restraints and lurching towards the hatch, Dash following wide-eyed at his heels. "Lene, grab the medkit, " Marius orders as Brutus' limp form comes up with the claw. Selene locks the claw and makes a grab for the kit, standard issue on all the hovercrafts in case they pick up the Victor in a bad way, and scrambles after them. The cannon fired — Brutus is dead, probably, that's what the cannon _means_ — but that doesn't always mean it's permanent.

"Are we really –" Dash begins, but Selene silences him with a look. It's not his fault; he's an ex-Career too but he's from Four, one of the rare non-Two Peacekeepers in the elite corps. He's good, he wouldn't be here as Selene's partner otherwise, but he isn't Two. He doesn't understand why they have to try, because it's their Victor lying limp in that claw, because it's _Brutus_.

Selene has never been one of the die-hard patriots, not like Petra, but that is not the point.

To Dash's credit, he swallows back any objections he might have had and helps Marius pull Brutus off the pickup claw.

And then it's chaos:

"He's not breathing!"

Marius throws his weight down in chest compresses. The big man left the Centre at eighteen over a decade ago, and he's kept in shape; Brutus' large chest visibly deforms under his weight. Selene stands back, knowing better than to hover uselessly but unwilling to stay too far back.

"— might have been poisoned too. Lene, give him the antidote, over there –"

Brutus is slippery with blood and has fragments of the jungle still stuck to him, Selene registers distantly, as she darts forward and plunges the hypo into his neck. It's broad-spectrum, not targeted, so who knows if it'll help but it's better than nothing. Selene considers, then swaps hypos and gives him a shot of adrenaline too. Dash slaps on a breath mask and hooks the strap around Brutus' head –

— and then, miraculously, Brutus spasms off the slippery deck, gasping for breath.

"Shit," Selene says, with feeling, collapsing back onto the deck.

Marius only nods and moves to scrub his face, then reconsiders, considering the state of his hands.

"He's alive," Dash whispers.

Marius fixes Dash with a steady look and rumbles, "Imagine if it were Finnick."

"True," the boy from Four sighs. And to be fair, it's not his District's Victor on the deck, but he's behaved as if it were. Dash looks a bit green and looks like he wants to collapse, but he's holding the oxygen mask in place with one hand and is monitoring Brutus' pulse with the other. Brutus, after that burst of energy, has subsided back into unconsciousness, deathly still and pale.

But he's not dead. He should be dead, but he's not, because — because they saved him. They saved him even though they weren't supposed to. Selene goes cold just thinking about it. What is the punishment for resuscitating a tribute who died in the Arena? It's not like that's in the standard procedures manual.

The hovercraft goes silent, and Selene bets everyone is thinking the same thing: _What now?_

In the midst of it all, their comm crackles to life.

For a long moment, nobody moves.

Then Marius abruptly heaves himself up. "Watch him," he says, nodding to Brutus, and goes back to the copilot seat.

Selene only nods, staring at Brutus. This is, come to think of it, the first time she's actually seen him up close in person – sure, she's seen him on TV and in passing last year when he was Clove's mentor, but this year Emin had made sure all juniors were assigned to the "easy" tributes. Selene and Dash spent most of their time walking around after the morphlings from Six.

He's bigger than she thought, in a way the cameras never seem to capture. Selene always thought Marius was large, since he left the Program at eighteen and they juiced him pretty good, but he's still around five or so centimetres shorter than Brutus and a good deal less muscular. And this is, what, Brutus over twenty years after his victory. He must've been even bigger as an eighteen-year-old tribute.

He's also Petra's mentor — could have been Selene's, might have been in a different life, though she can't imagine that working out too well. Selene wonders, not for the first time, how her old classmate is handling this whole mess. If it's bad for the Peacekeepers, it must be a nightmare for the other Victors… Odin and Nero were able come back with their old tributes and Lyme somehow talked her way in too, but they're the only ones with that option. Petra and the rest of them had to watch. On television. Just like the rest of the Districts.

Just like the Peacekeepers were supposed to watch.

Dash breaks the silence first. He's still pumping the oxygen bag by hand, making sure Brutus's chest rises and falls in a steady rhythm, but his eyes are still wide and cautious. "What do we do now?" he whispers.

"I don't know," Selene says, her throat tight. "He was dead when we pulled him out – or at least they thought he was, I dunno – and now he's not, because we saved him, but he's supposed to be dead. If we bring him back alive – I don't know."

The hovercraft changes course. Selene looks up, frowning – she can't see Rigel from this angle but Marius is hunched over the comm, his body language ratcheted tighter than she's ever seen. Out the window, the ground is receding at a brisk rate: they're going up – but where are they going?

Not the Capitol, that's for sure. This isn't the way they came.

Marius returns, a new tension in his frame.

"Where are we going?" Selene demands, before he can say a word.

"We have," Marius says heavily, "been issued an … invitation. As I'm sure you two have figured out, we can't just fly back to the Capitol and demand medical attention for Vee-Four-Nine." Meaning Brutus, Victor #49 – they've officially dispensed with the fiction of calling him Tribute 2M, then. "They'll just kill him all over again."

"Well, we can't have that." Dash attempts a smile; it comes out pained. "After all this effort?"

Marius just grimaces. "Yes, well. Instead, we're taking him to … I don't even know, just coordinates, but they've promised us safe harbour."

Selene swallows. _Safe harbour_ was for traitors, defectors from the enemy. "Marius – are you sure?" As a girl Selene might have teased Petra for being a rules-following robot, but defecting is something else entirely.

"Who's _they_?" Dash adds, ever wary. "How do you know we can trust them?"

"We don't have a choice," Marius says, bluntly. "Brutus needs medical attention or all of this will be for nothing, and we are fugitives now, ourselves, by saving him. We need them. And I think they need us, too. They were quite … happy … to hear from us."

Selene swallows hard. Just this morning, they were Peacekeepers – perhaps not happy with their current duties, but that would have passed. It's not too late to go back, Selene wants to say. Find a discreet doctor, drop off Brutus, and then … what?

When Selene was thirteen, she swore an oath to serve the Capitol until the day she died. When she was formally inducted into the Peacekeepers, she repeated that oath, this time to protect as well as to serve. Selene might rail against orders and bend the rules whenever she can, but even in her most frustrated and rebellious days she'd never thought of defying the _Capitol_.

To just – _betray_ it, like this, even if the Capitol betrayed the people first by sending Brutus and Enobaria back into the Arena – it was –

Marius gazed steadily at her and Dash. "You're both new," he says, and Selene winces because was she that obvious? "You haven't seen what Rigel and I have seen. I'll explain more later, but I need you both to trust us now that this is the right way forward. The only way forward."

A long moment, and then Dash nods. Marius nods back, gravely, and switches his gaze. "Selene?"

 _The only way forward._

"I trust you," Selene says, at last. And just like that, something loosens in her chest – a tightness she hadn't realized was there. Because it's the right decision. Maybe the only decision. In a way, it's the decision they made when they saved Brutus ten minutes and a lifetime ago. Or really, not even that.

It had been a choice between their district and the Capitol, and they'd chosen their district.

"Good." Marius exhales, some of the tension leaving his frame. "Good. Okay. Here's what we have to do …"

They trade around a little during the flight: Selene takes her turn on oxygen duty, Marius and Dash have gone up to take over piloting, and Rigel is methodically going around the craft pulling out small bits of circuitry out of their equipment and smashing them.

"Trackers," Rigel explains, when Selene asks. "There's one on every weapon, every helmet … they're useful bits of kit, lets Central track where you are in the field and coordinate. You know how we have everyone's location up on our HUD in the helmets? Not so useful if you're trying to get away."

Selene frowns. "How d'you know about them?"

"We had a man from Three in the Scouts, a few years back." Rigel pries open the butt of his rifle, pulls out a tiny bug, and stomps on it. "Retired now … he was a bit nuts, but a whiz with weapons, taught me and Marius a lot about our tech. Give me your pistol."

Bemused, Selene pulls it out and passes it over. Rigel pulls a bug out of its barrel and tosses it onto the growing pile, passes the pistol back. "They're not as sophisticated as that thing –" he nods towards the smear of electronics that used to be Brutus's tribute tracker, still smeared with his blood "— but they'll lead the Capitol straight to us, if we leave them."

Selene thinks this over. "Is there one on the hovercraft?"

Rigel flashes her a faint, approving smile. "There's a transponder in the cockpit. Or was, anyway."

It feels like it takes an eternity, but it's probably only a few hours until the hovercraft starts to descend. There's a soft thump of their landing gear unlocking. They must be close…

For a few breaths – measured in oxygen bag pumps, Selene thinks with dark humour – there's silence in the little cabin. Finally Selene voices the question that's been gnawing at her since they boosted away. "What do you think happened to the other Victors? Enobaria, Finnick … "

Rigel grimaces. "You saw how the Arena scanner lit up like fireworks, just as we boosted out? Whatever Beetee was planning with that tree, it worked. And – well. Just after we got called by our new friends, Control issued the order to scramble and pick up the rest of the Victors. Alive or dead. Immediately."

"Shit."

"Yes," Rigel agrees. "I wouldn't want to be the Gamemakers, this year. Someone somewhere has made some very big mistakes." He shakes his head. "We weren't the only ones in the air, either. There was another craft, closer to the tree – but not one of ours."

 _Ours_ meaning the Scouts; old habits, Selene supposes. "So …"

Rigel spreads his hands. "So, as to what happened to the others, your guess is as good as mine."

There's another thump, harder this time. Rigel straightens, his expression smoothing into a professional mask. "We're here."

Their – benefactors, whoever they are – are on the ball, at least. As soon as the hatch opens, a trauma team swarms up and whisks Brutus off their hands. Selene hands the oxygen bag over to an intense-looking woman with flyaway hair, and almost gives in to the urge to trail after them to make sure they don't kill him. As if reading her mind, Marius stills her with a gesture.

Then it's their turn.

Automatically, Rigel and Marius array themselves in front of the two juniors – Selene grits her teeth, it's a bit belated for protectiveness, honestly – and the four of them stand together as a man approaches them dressed in civilian gear but with the bearing of a soldier.

Time to find out what they've really gotten themselves into.

* * *

He'll die when the Games-damned beeping stops. Brutus can't concentrate on dying with that stupid noise in his ear. Every time he sinks down, every time the water closes over his head, there it is again: _beeeeeeeeep_ , the sound drilling through his skull and jerking him back, back to the light and the fire in his chest and the lava in his veins.

Maybe this time. Maybe this time. He falls, and it's dark and cool and calm and quiet, so blessed quiet, and maybe he'll finally get to rest, he hasn't had a good rest in years, decades, his whole life maybe, and wouldn't it be nice to finally get some -

 _BEEEEEEEEEEP_.

Of fucking course.

Either this is the most boring afterlife that anyone could possibly dream up or Brutus isn't dead after all. His eyes won't open and his body won't move and even his breathing isn't his - his chest rises and falls on its own, sucking in fire and oxygen whether he wants it to or not - and everything itches, too, a maddening tickle in his nose and on his hands that he can't scratch. Death shouldn't feel like this.

This can't be it. He died but he didn't, he's dead but he's not, and this isn't death, something else is going on and all he has to do is trust the Capitol and everything will be okay.

Trust the Capitol. Trust the Capitol. Trust the Capitol trust them trust them trust them because if Brutus isn't dead there's only one reason, the Capitol saved him. The Capitol is just and wise and fair and they reward their loyal servants and all he has to do is trust them and maybe they'll shut the muttfucking beeping off and let him get some fucking sleep.

* * *

There are no windows on the rebel hovercraft, and so Brutus' death plays across the blank walls in Lyme's mind instead. The engines whirr beneath them, vibrating through the floor and into her boots, and the buzz sets up in Lyme's clenched teeth and drills through her skull and Brutus falls choking, gasping, clutching at his throat in the desaturated nighttime jungle. His vitals flatline on the screen as the hovercraft turns, pushing Lyme sideways against her seat, and she closes her eyes against the nausea from her memories or the motion sickness or both.

"Boss," Claudius says in a low voice, and his fingers close over hers.

Lyme's eyes snap open (Brutus' eyes are open, wide and blue and bloodshot and unseeing), and she looks down at her hands. There's blood on her fingertips, caked under her broken, bitten-off nails just like the Arena, except it's been twenty years since Lyme walked out of that blazing savannah and into a life she'd asked for and not asked for at the same time, and what —

Oh.

Long, red weals break the skin of her wrist, blood oozing from the gashes she carved herself without noticing. "Shit," Lyme mutters, and she reaches into her bag for an extra shirt and tears off a strip of fabric, wrapping it around and around and pulling it tight.

"I don't like the flying either," Claudius says, thunking the back of his head against his seat. He's pale in the dim interior lighting, and he gives her a thin-lipped smile. He's flying off to who knows where with her, leaving behind everything and everyone on the promise of a single sentence splashed across the bottom of Lyme's mentor console, but he doesn't say any of that. "I wish we could see out, I wouldn't feel so trapped."

"Classified, probably," Lyme says. The words taste strange and sour in her mouth, and she has to force her tongue to cooperate but she's a Victor and a mentor and she knows how to speak even when rage and grief close her throat and put a stranglehold on her brain. "I definitely am not good enough at aerial navigating to lead the Capitol to a rebel base by flying over unfamiliar terrain."

Claudius huffs a quiet laugh, and he drops his hands into his lap, twisting his fingers together between his knees and bending forward with elbows resting on his thighs. "Do you think it's really them? District 13, I mean. I'm just saying, after all this I'm going to be disappointed if we land on some ranch in Ten."

"Maybe they'll teach you to ride a horse and you'll go full native," Lyme says, nudging Claudius with her knee. "But no, I think we've been flying too long for that." Wherever they're going District 2 will be far behind by now, even the mighty mountains long disappeared behind the curve of the horizon. On the train into the Capitol twenty years ago Lyme had gawked at the long, flat stretches of nothing through the middle districts, unable to comprehend so much land without trees or mountains to break up the line of sight.

Claudius glances over, grey eyes searching. "You want to sleep for a bit?" he asks. "You were in the chair all night, and I got some rest before you came to find me."

Exhaustion burns behind her eyes and turns her lids to sandpaper, but Lyme will not sleep now no matter how much the heaviness drags down her limbs. On nights like these years ago her mentor would appear with a glass of water and a small white pill and watch her drink it down, but Lyme is not a child anymore and her mentor is back home in Two, waiting for a Victor who will never come home.

(Brutus raises one fist to his chest, arm jerking and shaking as his muscles spasm and his nerves betray him; blood trickles from the corner of his mouth, wet with spit, and oozes thicker and darker from his nostrils)

"No," Lyme says, sharper than she meant to, but Claudius doesn't flinch. "No, I — not yet."

It's tempting to sleep, to dream that this never happened, but it won't help her on waking, and anyway there's no point in denying it. Lyme is a traitor who's made her choice, and it started long before yesterday. Brutus' death might have gotten Lyme the in but it's not about him, and never has been. It's not just twenty-four people who were promised eternity in exchange for sacrifice tossed back in without another thought. It's not just eighteen years of sitting in the mentor chair watching bright, beautiful children bleed out onto the rocks. It's not just the twenty-two others besides her own who die every year.

It's starvation in Twelve turned into fashion inspiration for whisper-thin Capitol women, it's the faces of the dead projected above their families every January, it's Chaff's furious stories of children whipped to death for slipping a few sweet plums into their mouths during harvest time. It's cameras in every home and a president who stinks of blood and roses and Finnick Odair's blank eyes and razor smile as he nuzzles the neck of a woman who simpers and slides her hand up his thigh in full view of everyone at the party so they know he's hers for tonight.

It's quotas being raised while fishermen drag empty nets in increasing desperation and children slave in factories until their lungs turn black with dust and grime and a thousand other things that Lyme has heard whispered over the years. Heard and pushed away because she and hers are safe, safe in a district that she and children like her sold their souls to protect.

But Brutus is dead in the Arena and no one is safe, not really. Not until the Capitol burns.

"Boss," Claudius says again, and Lyme pries her fingers loose and rubs her thumb over her fingertips until the blood dries and flakes away.

Despite everything Lyme ends up dozing after all, though she's only aware she fell asleep after jerking awake, mouth gummed and tasting foul and heart pounding from a dream that slips away when she tries to chase it. "I think we're coming down for a landing," Claudius says. "The engine sounds changed."

Lyme knuckles her eyes and runs her tongue over her teeth. Napping only made everything worse, and Lyme can't even imagine what sort of picture she'll present to the rebels when they meet her. District 2's first Victor-traitor, present and accounted for with dark-rimmed eyes and slept-in clothes and a tattoo oozing fresh blood. At least Claudius looks better, tired but not haggard, and his eyes are sharp and keen and alert as he trains his stare on the door, fingers tapping an uneven rhythm against his knees.

Sure enough Lyme's stomach swoops as the hovercraft drops down, and who knows where they are with wind shears like this but it's definitely not the plains of Ten. Claudius lets out a bitten-off squawk and squeezes his eyes shut so hard his entire face screws up around it, knuckles whitening as he clenches his fists. Lyme reaches over and puts a hand over his, and Claudius grips back so hard her fingers ache in moments.

Finally the craft settles down with a reverberating _thunk_ , and Lyme combs her fingers through Claudius' hair. After that several long minutes of sitting and waiting with her spine so tense Lyme is surprised it hasn't telescoped, nothing but the sound of their breathing and Claudius' boot tapping against the floor until Lyme finally steps on his toes to make him stop.

"Sorry, boss," Claudius says, and then the door hisses open.

A tall, dark man stands in the entryway as Lyme blinks against the sudden brightness. "This way," he says, gesturing with his chin because his hands are too busy pointing a giant assault rifle at the two of them.

Fair enough, that; Lyme's not sure she could trust a rebel organization that let two strangers walk in without a little caution, and if Lyme had rushed off the platforms back in her Arena she would have been blown to bits. She stands and grabs her bag, Claudius somewhat twitchier at her side, and they follow the man down the ramp and into a large metal compound. Lyme's not surprised when a handful of armed guards falls into place behind them, and they walk through long corridors lit with harsh white lights along the ceiling.

Claudius' breaths hiss in her ears, and the longer they walk the faster they come. "Are we underground?" he asks finally, breaking the silence. No one answers, and so he keeps walking. Lyme won't embarrass him by taking his hand, not in front of soldiers with guns, but she can't help noticing that he's using the old Centre trick of reducing sweaty hands by splaying out his fingers instead of wiping his palms.

They're led to a small room that's professional and utilitarian and manages to say _cell_ without anything actively unpleasant to spell it outright. There's a small door in the back that presumably leads to some kind of bathroom, given the lack of drains or holes in the main floor, and Lyme swallows. "Wait here," the man says, ushering them in. "Command has to talk. Someone will find you after."

Lyme nods and turns away as the door shuts. Claudius tosses his bag into the corner, then drops down onto the bench; Lyme sits beside him, resting her hand on the back of his neck and digging her thumb into the tense knot of muscle. "Well," she says. "No turning back now."

* * *

( _Cashmere and Gloss bleeding out into the sand. Gloss goes down right away but Cashmere's still there for a few seconds, eyes wide and panicked, and she's too far away for Brutus to reach her -_

 _The lovebirds and their friends sit on the beach with their bounty of food in front of them, laughing and flinging empty shrimp skins at each other's heads. Brutus holds Enobaria down with one hand and brings the torch close to her skin with the other, and at last the gigantic tick-mutt trying to burrow into her shoulder pulls itself out while she spits curses like acid -_

 _"She's as good as dead. Come on, Enobaria!"_

 _chaos screaming thunder - cannons? - salt spray jungle vines blood running down his leg shouting running running tripping -_ )

"Brutus." Not in his head this time, at least, he thinks not. "Brutus, wake up."

* * *

Turns out their benefactors are a group calling themselves the Second Rebellion.

That there is even a rebellion, let alone two, is news to Selene. The first one – led by Alma Coin of District 13, whose existence is also news to Selene — is apparently exactly what all Selene's teachers used to warn them about. Power-mad, tyrannical, more concerned with victory and carving themselves a place at the head of a new regime than saving the people they're supposedly fighting for. This group claims to be better, but who the hell knows really. It's not as though they'd admit it if they were. Selene carefully keeps skepticism off her face.

This group has no one unified headquarters, but rather pockets throughout Panem, including spies in Thirteen. The operative in the Capitol that contacted their hovercraft had directed them to a hidden base in District 8, which had been hit particularly hard by Capitol reprisals following the Victory Tour revolts. So far the most promising part of the whole ordeal is that no one confiscated any of their weapons or gear, and the man who came to meet them was unarmed.

The good news is, they're free to go if they want.

"If you prefer, you can leave," the Rebellion man says. "After you left, our man spoofed a distress call from your vehicle to the Games complex; the hovercraft has been presumed destroyed in the Arena explosion. It's not the only one that got caught in the blast, so no one will try looking for you. We can have new identities made up for all of you, sneak you into the outskirts of Two, and we all go our separate ways. You can go to ground and live out the rest of your lives in peace."

"And Brutus?" Marius asks, expression carefully guarded. His forearms are still smeared with Brutus' blood, giving an extra layer of gravity to the question.

"We would prefer to keep him here," the man says. Selene can't say she's surprised. "We can't risk moving him yet, not in his condition, and he could be useful. There's no better opportunity to bring District 2 to our side than to have Brutus with us. If you choose to leave, I promise he will be protected."

Rigel smiles tightly. It's not a happy expression. "Of course, the Capitol could still get wind of us and execute us for treason. New identities are useful and everything, but they know our faces. And if you're telling the truth, there isn't going to be much peace to be had in the near future."

"Yes." The man nods. "It is, however, on the cards. We would like very much for you to join us – but not against your will. We aren't the Capitol, we're not Coin, and that means you get to say no."

Rigel exhales. "I need a moment to confer with my people."

"Certainly."

When they're alone, Rigel drops the mask and scrubs a hand over his face. "Here's the deal, people," he says, and Selene is abruptly struck by how tired he looks. He's only ten years older than Selene, but in that moment the gap seems wider. "You heard the man. We can either join them, or go to ground and evade the Capitol. Your choice."

Dash frowns. "What do you mean?"

Even Selene, whose files from the Centre and the Peacekeeping Academy are peppered with incidents of insubordination and backtalk against her superiors, shifts a little. It would be easier if Rigel told her what to do; he's their commander, he's supposed to make the tough calls.

"I mean exactly that," Rigel says, holding firm. "Look, this is so far out of standard operating protocol that I can't make the decision for all of us, legally or ethically. This is something we should all choose for ourselves."

"Going is only an option if we trust their forgery," Selene points out. She's seen the official Capitol documents, trained how to recognize fakes — she's even arrested people who attempted to create their own. Any Peacekeeper worth their uniform knows how to tell the difference unless it's a very skilled copy.

"Which we don't, not necessarily," Rigel agrees.

"I say we join them," Dash says. They all look at him. He's always been the idealistic one, and his expression is determined. "This is our chance to make a better world. And – I won't live the rest of my life on the run, looking over my shoulder waiting for the Capitol to find me."

Rigel and Marius look at each other. Marius tilts his head forward, just a fraction, and says, "I agree. Joining is our best option. Selene?"

Selene crosses her arms, defensive. Certainly the Capitol isn't good, exactly, she's seen enough to know that much. But it's not really _bad_ , either. The Capitol just _is_ , and as long as the Capitol's existed there have been Peacekeepers to serve it. Selene's family has served the Capitol since the Dark Days; she comes from a line of Peacekeepers going back generations, all the way to the war and beyond. Serving the Capitol brings honour to your District and bringing honour to your District is the best way to serve it, and serving your District was what everyone should aspire to do. Selene learned that truth from her parents and her aunt and uncle as soon as she was old enough to understand, and when she didn't earn the tribute spot, Selene went on to do the next best thing.

Except when serving your District – saving Brutus – meant going against the Capitol, and they can't exactly take that back.

Even so, it's one thing to save Brutus, it's one thing to hand Brutus over to the rebels … it's quite another to take up arms against the Capitol in service of said rebels.

Or is it? The Capitol won't see it that way. Selene has seen people turned into Avoxes, even executed, for less.

Maybe if they're dead anyway, they might as well go down fighting.

"I agree," Selene says, and tries to ignore the unease churning in her gut.

* * *

"Brutus. Brutus, wake up."

Brutus groans, and this time he actually manages a hoarse, rattling gasp. There's no more tickling in his nose and the back of his throat, just scratchy pain like the sand digging into his eyeballs. Light burns red through his eyelids but his head stays still when he tries to move it, Games damn it all.

"Brutus, do you know where you are?"

It's not his mentor - too high a voice for Odin, this is a young man's tenor not Odin's rumbling baritone - but they wouldn't bring Odin in to question Brutus after the Arena went to hell anyway. Probably one of the Gamemakers, or maybe just a doctor with a checklist - except the accent is wrong, there's no Capitol here, flat vowels and a dragged-out A sound - but either way, Brutus needs to pull himself together and answer the questions.

Brutus doubted, so many doubts, it burns at him with the shame of it, so unworthy when he should have known it was a test, should have known they'd save him. Now they have, and now it's time to try to prove he's worth their faith. A worthy servant doesn't make them ask twice.

He starts with the pain. Pain is a tool, it's a way to focus when the brain does its best to scatter, and Brutus finds each part of himself that hurts and sends all his attention there, one at a time. This time his body responds, sort of; Brutus tries to rub his eyes and ends up smacking himself full in the face with a hand that feels twice as heavy as it should be.

He growls, but his tongue is thick and stupid and won't make words. Brutus twitches his hand, pinches his thumb and fingers together in something that maybe might resemble trying to hold a pen. "Ah, one minute," the voice says, and Brutus drifts and sends his attention to his fist, curling it in hard so the nails dig in.

"Here." The man presses something into Brutus' hand. It's not a pen, it's a thick plastic tube, and the sharp scent of a marker stings his nose. Brutus flops his hand to the side and finds a smooth plastic rectangle, likely a dry erase board, and eh, good enough. "Let me know if you need help. For now, let's try again. Do you know where you are?"

Brutus scrawls the letters for 'Capitol', though he runs out of manual dexterity somewhere halfway through and ends the word on a scribble.

"Ah," the man says quietly. "No, you're not in the Capitol."

Brutus manages a frown, and he drags the marker over the whiteboard in a long line underscoring where he thinks he wrote the word, pressing so hard it squeaks.

"No," the man says again. "You're in District 8."

It's probably a test, and so Brutus does not scrawl 'what the fuck'. Instead he smears his hand across the whiteboard's surface and draws a question mark.

"You died in the Arena," the man says, and Brutus goes cold. "Nerve gas, very nasty, but luckily it can cause the life monitor to detect a false negative. The hovercraft crew managed to revive you after they picked you up, and once we realized your life signs were still active, we contacted them and had them bring you here."

The cold only spreads. 'We?' Brutus writes, the muscles in his wrist and forearm protesting, or maybe it's just the creeping dread.

"An alternative," he says.

Well, that's just fucking great and not vague at all.

A hundred questions flood his mind, pressing up against the front of his mind like the painted Capitol citizens when the trains pull in, but then one thought sparks through the ache and confusion and (very likely) heavy sedation and everything burns away. Brutus' hand shakes as he swipes the board clean and writes one word: 'Enobaria'.

Silence. Maybe he didn't write it right; Brutus clears the board and starts over, making the letters with deliberate strokes, and the man sucks in a breath of air so yeah, no, he gets it, so why the fuck isn't he answering? Brutus slams his fist down against the blankets, hitting the edge of the board and sending the marker clattering.

"Enobaria is - with the Capitol," the man says finally, slowly, carefully, like he thinks that Brutus will somehow yank himself out of his stupor an manage to kill him when he can't even open his eyes. Then again, depending on the next sentence, Brutus damn well might try. "She and Peeta Mellark and Johanna Mason were taken by Capitol hovercrafts after the Arena exploded."

After the Arena _what_?

"The others - Katniss Everdeen, Finnick Odair, Beetee Latier - were picked up by Coin's Rebellion and taken to the base in District 13." ( _What_?) "We assumed Enobaria would be with them, since she was with Finnick at the tree when Plutarch's hovercraft came to get the others, but apparently someone had other ideas because they left her behind. We didn't realize."

Brutus' breath sits ragged in his chest, digging claws into his lungs, but he forces the air through. He directs all his energy to his eyes, but as hard as he tries to pry them open, the best he gets is a slight flutter before the headache spikes in again. 'Safe?' he writes.

"We don't know," the man says slowly. "The mentors from One and Two were sent back to their districts. Everyone else was taken into custody. The outlying Villages were raided the next morning and the remaining Victors taken as well. Since then none of our sources have been able to get a read on where they are." He takes a breath. "I feel like we're going about this backwards. There's so much more that needs to be explained -"

Brutus heaves the whiteboard off the bed in the direction of the voice. It makes contact with a dull thud but it's far too low - knee, probably, maybe even shin, Brutus can't fucking use his limbs properly right now so he wouldn't be surprised - and it's not enough, nowhere near enough. Not when the fury swirls up inside him and all he can do is lie there like a helpless fucking baby while the whole world has gone to pieces, Victors being rounded up left and right and disappearing. At least Enobaria is safe in the Capitol, and his kids might be okay in the Village, but if there's war that's not a guarantee –

"I'll let you rest," the man says, and Brutus thinks about crushing his skull to powder in his hands because he may as well, he can't do a Games-damned thing. The man pushes a button, and Brutus has a second to feel wonderfully pain-free and floating before realizing that he's just been dosed with morphling, the bastard, and then it drags him under.


	2. Chapter 2

Brutus wakes up stiff and sore and itching from a morphling spike comedown, mouth tasting like something crawled inside and took a shit before it died, but at least when Brutus opens his eyes they actually listen. Grey walls, grey blanket, aged and repaired, cracks running up the walls, instead of smooth, blinding Capitol white. That convinces him that if nothing else, he's not back at the hospital in Games Command.

There's a glass of water beside his bed, half full of melting ice, and Brutus gives his limbs a test run by lurching to the side and grabbing at it. Success, thank Snow, and Brutus manages to pull the glass toward him without spilling it all over himself, only to stop and glare at the Games-damned _straw_ someone stuck in it like he's a damn child. Brutus glowers at the air, and he flicks the straw away and downs the water as fast as his body will let him. Water dribbles down his chin but he wipes it with his forearm and gasps at how good it tastes, clear and cool and sharp, after the warm, semi-sweet sap water of the Arena.

He doesn't bother worrying if they've drugged it; at this point they could've done that a million other ways.

"I told them not to put the straw in it," says a voice from beside the bed, a different one from last time, and Brutus blinks as he registers the man's presence. He looks to be around thirty, similar in age to Brutus' boy Devon, and he holds himself with military precision even as he sits casually in the chair next to Brutus' cot.

Brutus narrows his eyes. "Bullshit _you're_ from Eight," he bursts out, and that's not the way he usually starts a conversation with a polite stranger, but excuse him if he ain't exactly fit for company manners at the moment. There's no way this kid with his short hair and Career bearing and crisp white uniform comes from a district of half-starved factory workers.

"No, I'm not," he says. "I'm from Two, same as you are."

That explains a lot and nothing all at once, and a second later Brutus slots the bits together and comes up with the answer: Peacekeeper. Not that it tells him what the hell a Two Peacekeeper is doing here with Brutus in the bowels of Eight, stuck in some repurposed hospital with people talking treason like it's no big deal. Still, if he's got a Two at his disposal, Brutus won't waste it, even as he reminds himself that they've sent this kid here to talk to him because they know Brutus will respond better. He might not like it, but they have a point.

"Whatever happens," Brutus says, meeting his gaze and holding it, "I don't want you to bullshit me. Are we clear?"

"No bullshit," he agrees, acknowledging the request with a nod, and this is so much better already. "My name is Rigel, I was a Peacekeeper. My squad was in the hovercraft that pulled you out of the Arena."

The one, if the other man hadn't been lying, circumvented whatever nerve gas that killed Brutus to bring him back to life. Brutus lifts the glass and tips an ice cube into his mouth, sucking on it to give himself a second. "They said you - revived me." Rigel nods again. Brutus lets out a breath and shoves the ice into his cheek with his tongue. "That's treason," he says, and he's met a few Twos who've made him raise his eyebrows but never one who actually turned.

He watches Rigel for a reaction, but the man just tilts his head. "You're our Victor. We couldn't let you die."

The ice rattles against the glass as Brutus' hand shakes, and he hastily drops it back onto the side table. He didn't ask for this, didn't ask for people to go against the Capitol for _him_ , what kind of a batshit thought is that? Brutus has always encouraged loyalty and faithfulness and absolute, unconditional fealty to the Capitol no matter what happens. He always thought he inspired the same.

"Fuck," Brutus says finally, because what can he possibly say? This man and his squad will have friends, maybe even family, and now that's all gone because they chose to keep Brutus breathing. For _what_?

Rigel gives him a crooked grin, like he knows what's going through Brutus' head and would tell him it didn't matter if Brutus said any of it aloud. But then the smile fades, brows knitting together, and he lets out a breath. "I'm just sorry we couldn't get Enobaria out," he says, and oh.

Brutus closes his eyes, and for a second he considers reaching over and hitting the morphling button himself, but no. He is Two and Two will endure, if she's in the Capitol then Enobaria is safe and better off where she is. Except someone from Eight might lie, but someone from his home district ...

"Fuck," Brutus says again, quietly this time, and he lets his head fall back against the thin pillow. Please let her be all right; they have to know that whatever else happened in the Arena, Enobaria's loyalty is - well, her loyalty is to herself, and to her mentor, and then maybe to her district, but it sure as the Reaping ain't to the Mockingjay and her little crew of traitors.

Too many questions swirl in Brutus' mind, and he might still be pissed at the guy from yesterday but he did have one thing right; Brutus needs the facts. "All right, fill me in," Brutus says, pushing himself up to a sitting position. "Where are we?"

"There is a rebellion against the Capitol, led by a woman named Alma Coin, that's based out of District 13," Rigel says. "The people who contacted my squad after we revived you is a fringe group that split off from her organization some years back. They believe that somewhere over the years, Coin's rebellion lost sight of its goal of a free Panem and began working toward a Thirteen-run one."

"Cut off the dog's head and sew another right back on, huh," Brutus says grimly. He's not surprised. That's the whole damn problem with rebellions; they don't think long-term, and people, no matter who they are, rarely want to share power once they've taken it. He quirks an eyebrow, pleased when his face actually obeys. "But not this one."

Rigel pauses, and Brutus hasn't missed the way he used 'we' for his own squad but 'they' for the outfit they're in now. He might be working with them, but he doesn't trust them, not yet. Oddly enough, that makes Brutus feel a little bit better. "I believe they're telling the truth, and that they believe what they're saying. That's a start. They offered my people protection if we didn't want to stay, said they would help us disappear and not come after us, and I believed them there too."

Brutus nods. "So they got you by accident, and now you're doing what?"

Rigel gives him a small, grim smile. "My squad and I are working with rebel intelligence to locate the captured Victors and free them. Including Enobaria."

Brutus lets out a long breath. He just saw a third of the remaining Victors wiped out in a matter of days; it would be nice to know the rest of them aren't next. Does that thought make him a traitor? He looks at Rigel, wets his lips as best he can with his dry tongue. "But my people - the Twos - they're all safe? I think the other guy, he said they got to go home?"

"They let the mentors from One and Two go back to their Villages," Rigel says with a nod, but his face goes tight. "All but Enobaria are accounted for."

Brutus narrows his eyes. "What ain't you telling me?" he asks, keeping calm just in case he's paranoid and crazy from dying and being dragged back and Snow knows what all else. "Accounted for just means you know where they are, it doesn't mean they're safe. Don't lie to me!"

Rigel sucks in air through his teeth, but he nods. "No bullshit, I was getting to that. Lyme and Claudius didn't return to Two with the others. Instead they went back to District 13 with a hovercraft of Coin's people the night you died. They've been there ever since." He folds his hands and waits, probably for Brutus to explode.

For a minute Brutus thinks he might, until he tries to fling the blankets off and only gets partway before exhaustion pulls at his muscles. Lyme. Of course it would be Lyme, of course she wouldn't just go home after watching him die. And she would have, at the console; she would've had a prime seat to all of Brutus' twitching and oozing and every last humiliating second of it. Of course she grabbed her boy and ran.

Brutus always knew it could happen, it's why he and Lyme never talked about it, why Brutus rarely shared his own doubts even when they gnawed at him because he didn't want to give her any encouragement. He doesn't know what it is, her temperament or her mentor being soft on her or her tendency to pick the crazy, needy tributes who flamed out hard, but Lyme never managed to square mentoring away like she should have.

One night, after they both lost a tribute together, she and Brutus had gone to one of their favourite haunts; a quiet bar with dim lighting and no cameras pointed at the back booth. She'd asked him how he could be so loyal, year after year; Brutus had told her the truth, that he didn't know any other way to be.

("What's the alternative?" he'd asked her. "You've seen what happens to everyone else when they think they know better. Follow the rules and you get rewarded, that's the deal we made and that's what I plan to do."

"What happens if that's not true anymore?" Lyme countered, staring at the table. "What if one day they ask for something you don't want to give?"

"Everything I have is by the Capitol's grace and mercy," Brutus had responded, stubborn and angry and afraid to hear her talk like this. "There's nothing I have they don't have the right to ask me to return.")

It all swirls in his mind now, and the air sticks in Brutus' chest and he's tired, so tired. He glances at Rigel, watching him with polite distance, and Brutus blows out a breath and pulls himself together in front of his audience. He drags both hands down his face and closes his eyes. "I need some time to think."

"Of course," Rigel says, and Brutus appreciates the cool Two professionalism even after dropping a bomb like that. "But just so we're clear, you're safe here, for now, and you're being looked after. You're not a prisoner, but you're also not recovered, so they'd like you to stay put for now. I'll be back in a few days after my next mission, we can talk more then."

Brutus nods, and he doesn't wait for Rigel to leave, just turns over on his side and stares at the wall. He ignores the itch to pound the morphling button because he is not a fucking addict, thank you, and Brutus squeezes his eyes shut and forces himself to fall asleep the old-fashioned way.

* * *

The first time Petra ever set foot in Snow's mansion she'd been nearly delirious with pain and emergency medication because a shattered knee and half-regrown hip was no excuse for not standing in the president's presence. Brutus had argued, said she would be allowed a wheelchair, but the thought of meeting President Snow sitting in a chair like an invalid had set Petra off into a fit of panic until Brutus had to hold her down and the medics jabbed her with a syringe full of sedative.

Brutus had understood, in the end, and so he'd carried her through to the mansion but set her down when they got to the door of the audience room. Petra's brain had been fogged with enough painkillers to bring down someone twice her size, and every time she moved the pain tore through her like a mutt taking a huge bite out of her side — but it had been worth it to stand in front of the president and have him _invite_ her to sit, instead of having to beg for an indulgence.

Now it's three years later and Petra stands in front of the room with the giant oaken doors of her own accord, and the residual pain in her hip is nothing to the fire burning in her chest. Her country is bleeding, dying, ripping itself apart, and Petra is here to do her part to save it.

Brutus is dead — she tells herself every morning and every chance she gets, _Brutus is dead_ , and it hasn't stopped hurting yet but one day it will, it has to — and Petra can't imagine a world without him, but at least she can try her hardest to make sure there's still a world to live without him in.

Ronan stands beside her as they wait, tall and silent and strong, his back unbowed by age. He uses a cane to walk the same as Petra, and three years ago when she'd railed and screamed and begged Brutus not to make her use a mobility aid Ronan had come to see her. He'd stood in front of her — and how must she have looked, her face red and puffed from crying, hair mussed, wearing one of Brutus' cast-off shirts as a nightgown — with one hand on a cane made of polished wood, and he'd pierced her through with his sharp, blue-eyed gaze and asked her if she thought him weak.

Odin carved her the cane she uses now, using a bough of good, strong Two aspen, and Petra leans her weight on it more for the emotional support than because she's sore. The president will make this right. He has to.

Finally the door opens, and an aide waves them through. President Snow stands to receive them at his desk, and he waves them both into customary chairs — Petra's is sized for her, short so she won't have to scramble up onto it but won't fall with a thump from it being too low either — and then sits himself.

"Good morning, Miss Petra," President Snow says with a small nod. "Ronan."

"Mr. President," Petra says, heart fluttering, and Ronan nods in return. Ronan was all but silent this trip up, staring out the window instead of chatting with Petra to keep her nerves down as usual. The war has affected all of them, but it will get better. That's why they're here.

President Snow tilts his head to the side. "Something looks different about you, Petra."

Heat flares in Petra's cheeks, and red hair might have meant a lot of predictable 'fiery' comments during her Games that made it easy to play to the crowd but it also means a blush that not even Centre training could make charming instead of ridiculous. Petra knows exactly what's different; the question is whether she should bring it up.

She glances to her side to ask Brutus — _Ronan's_ — opinion, but he's preoccupied, watching the president with a slightly narrowed gaze that's focused and distant at the same time. Finally Petra swallows and takes the leap. "It's the clothes, I think, sir."

"Ah, that's it." President Snow leans back in his chair and makes a vague twirling gesture with his fingers. "No more ruffles."

"No, sir." Petra digs her fingers into the arm of her chair to stop herself from twisting her hands in the fabric of her pants — pants! when was the last time her stylist allowed her pants in the Capitol, she can't even remember — or toying with the front of her jacket. It's a suit, tailored and sleek instead of masculine like the ones Lyme would wear, but it's still a suit. For three years Petra wore nothing but frills and little girl dresses so the Capitol citizens could cluck over the poor child who'd come out with such a terrible injury. She'd sliced every single one into ribbons as soon as she returned to Two and given the fabric strips to Devon for his macrame or Emory to make into rag dolls for the orphans in the community home. "I didn't request a change from the stylist, sir, this is just what they gave me."

"Oh, I'm aware." The president favours her with a small smile. "I requested it. I think it's time for everyone's favourite little girl to grow up, don't you?"

Ronan exhales slowly, nostrils flaring before he catches himself, but Petra sits up straight. "Oh yes, sir!" she bursts out. "Yes, I — I would like that."

President Snow nods. "Petra, do you know what you are?"

That gives her pause. Petra is a hundred things — a tribute, a Victor, a Two, a loyal citizen, a weapon; she's also a girl of twenty-one who cries when she's emotionally overwhelmed despite killing more than a dozen people in her lifetime and misses her mentor so much she can't breathe at night — but which one is the right answer, that's trickier. Half a dozen options flick through her mind in seconds, but Petra squares her shoulders. "Whatever you need."

This time the smile widens. "I knew I could count on you," the president says, and he reaches into his desk and pulls out a round, metal tin. "Would you like a biscuit? They're Ronan's favourite."

He slides the tin across the desk, and Ronan reaches forward to take one except that President Snow raises his eyebrows. "Ronan, manners," he says, chiding, and Petra almost giggles. She can't remember the last time anyone scolded Ronan about anything, and it's even funnier because _manners_ is what he likes to say to young Victors who've forgotten their place. "Let the young lady have first pick."

Ronan withdraws his hand, curling it into a fist at his side as Petra chooses a biscuit and pops it into her mouth. It's shortbread, something she's only had a handful of times even though she's a Victor and can have anything because all that milk and sugar and butter still feels like a luxury after growing up poor and Petra doesn't want it to stop being special. It melts slowly on her tongue and Petra savours the taste of it; finally Ronan gets to choose his, and he eats it with a nod of thanks. Well, after having tea with the president twice a year for the past fifty, Petra supposes even the most amazing things can be commonplace.

"You're a warrior, Petra," the president continues, waving over his aide with a pot of tea and three delicate cups. "You're a soldier, with battle scars that would have crippled a man twice your size but here you are."

Petra's eyes prickle, and she's glad for the tea because it helps dissolve the rock in her throat. "Thank you, sir," she says finally.

"I should be thanking you," President Snow says, and Petra nearly drops her cup. "I admire your strength, Petra. The people of this country are lost, confused. They need stability. They need strength. And you, Petra, are a rock. People like you are the reason this country has stood for so long. We need you. This country needs you."

"Sir —" Petra aced her acting classes and image training, and she's had practice with speeches and sound bites and a hundred other ways to be impressive in public but they all fade away under the president's gaze. "Sir, I'm honoured, I —"

"She's a child," Ronan interrupts, almost sharply, and Petra jumps. "And she's just lost her mentor."

"She's a Victor," President Snow corrects mildly. "And I think it's time the nation remembers what that means."

Petra holds her breath. The world is tipping, she can feel it, and she's always been agile. She won in an Arena intended for the most brute-force of tributes by adapting her strategy on the fly. She can do it now. "It means loyalty, sir," Petra says, not waiting for permission, but the tea sits warm in her stomach and she can't help it. The president waves her on, and Petra leans forward. "It means never forgetting who gave us this honour in the first place. And it means being an example for the rest of the country to follow. The people —"

She shakes her head, and the anger that's been bubbling up since Katniss Everdeen inspired her mutinous uprising comes tumbling out. "They need examples, good ones. Right now they're following the wrong one and hundreds are dying — maybe thousands. Does Katniss Everdeen feed their children when they burn their crops to protest? Who starves when they bomb the supply trains in her name? She doesn't love them. She doesn't even care. If she cared she'd tell them to stop. They need to remember the truth."

President Snow taps his fingertips together, and he shoots Ronan a look that's decades old and Petra can't even begin to read. "See, Ronan, I think she'll do just fine," he says, and Petra swells with pride. "Petra, my dear, I think I have the perfect job for you."

* * *

Two days pass according to the watch on Lyme's wrist, not that District 13 appears to follow any kind of automatic circadian cycle with its lighting. There's a switch on the wall that changes the overhead fixture from glaring white to a less eye-straining orange, and Lyme slaps it every twelve hours or so just to give her and Claudius some kind of rhythm. They get meals brought to their door twice a day, standard cafeteria hash that tastes like recycling, but no one will answer any questions and there's no word on how long it will take Command to acknowledge that they're here.

It's a big enough room, at least, the two twin beds pushed on opposite walls so Lyme doesn't have to argue with Claudius that the mentor sleeps on the floor, and space enough to go through workout routines without hitting her head off any walls or furniture. Lyme spends most of her time going through bodyweight exercises, round after round of pushups and sit-ups and burpees and squats, using the beds and the benches as leverage.

"This is not why I turned traitor, boss," Claudius complains the second morning, when Lyme boots him out of bed and tells him to drop and give her fifty. "I didn't come all the way across the country to do a bunch of exercises before choking down some protein slop for breakfast. If I wanted that I never would've left the Centre."

Lyme just rolls her eyes and gives him a tap in the ribs with her foot as a note to correct his form, and Claudius blisters the floor with his swearing but doesn't argue. Whether it's because Claudius listens to his mentor or because he's guessed the reason, it doesn't really matter; either way Lyme needs to keep them busy, keep their muscles working and their brains occupied counting sets and repetitions so they don't have time to think.

When they're not working out they're sparring, and the adrenaline and sheer physicality of it, even in the tight space, comes as a welcome relief after days of hunching in the mentor's chair or sitting up straight and smiling down in the sponsor den. It's all the aggression that Lyme had to bottle up and hide behind a smile, and she and Claudius fight and lash out until they're both bruised and trembling.

It won't bring Brutus back but it stops Lyme from screaming every time she thinks about it — or from curling up in a ball when she remembers her mentor and other Victor back home, who will have noticed her absence and guessed what it means by now — and that's enough.

Lyme flops onto her cot after another match, stretching out her shoulder with one arm over her head, opposite hand wrapped around her elbow. Claudius picks up his pack and fishes around in the bottom, pulling out a thick black case. Lyme blinks. "Is that your violin?"

"Not the full one," Claudius says, ducking his head and opening the lid. Inside is a collection of wood and strings and plastic, set carefully into depressions in the velvet lining. Lyme's chest tightens; Brutus ordered the collapsible violin from a local craftsman for the fifth anniversary of Claudius' victory. "I didn't think I'd feel much like playing, but it felt weird not to have anything on me. I forgot I had it until now."

Lyme lets out a long breath, then lies back on the hard mattress and closes her eyes. "Play for me?"

"Sure thing, boss," Claudius says, screwing the pieces of the bow together. Moments later the low, haunting shiver of the bottom strings fills the room — the high notes tend to saw into her brain and drill into her eyes and set up a wicked headache so Claudius avoids them when she's there — and Lyme lets the music carry her off into a doze.

Lyme has her feet on the bed and her hands planted firmly on the floor, counting through a series of inclined pushups, when the door opens off-schedule and a pair of boots enters her field of vision. She raises her head, sweat stinging her eyes, and takes in the stone-faced woman who stands in the doorway. She's a soldier, standing tall and straight with the kind of military bearing Lyme only ever sees in Peacekeepers, and she wears the plain grey uniform with a quiet pride. This is no backyard operation.

Claudius swings his legs over the side of his cot, fingers tense against the edge of the mattress. He keeps his face carefully blank as Lyme drops to the ground and stands, brushing off her hands.

"President Coin will see you now," the woman says, and her gaze flickers to Claudius. "She would prefer to speak to you in private."

This isn't exactly the time to start making demands, not when they showed up based on the invitation of someone who apparently jumped on an opportunity without contacting their leader. Then again, Lyme might not be carved from the bedrock of Two like Brutus, but that doesn't make her a pushover, and she's worked the sponsor floors for eighteen years.

"I trust him with my life," Lyme says simply, and Claudius straightens up a little at the corner of her eye. "Claudius is my Victor. If the president is willing to give me a chance, I promise she won't be risking anything else by letting him come along."

There's also no way that they could ask a District 2 mentor to keep secrets from her Victor in a case like this, either, and they'll have to know that. May as well lay that out on the table now.

The soldier gives Lyme a flat look that registers exasperation but no particular surprise. "You'll take full responsibility for him, then. Anything he says or does is on you."

Lyme doesn't look at Claudius, doesn't reach out to take his hand, only nods. "Always. I'm his mentor."

"Come on, then."

They follow the soldier through the corridors, and Lyme takes note of the people who pass them. A handful of other soldiers with sharp posture and purposeful strides; techs making their way in groups, huddled and chattering and waving their datapads; civilians who stand back against the wall to let them pass and watch them with surprising lack of curiosity. At one point they round a corner and a small child runs into Lyme's legs, then careens away before she can react, shouting "Sorry, sir!" over its shoulder.

"How many people live here?" Lyme asks, trying and failing to gauge the size and scope of the place from the inside.

"Enough," the soldier says after a small pause. "We don't have the population of District 2, but we aren't just a military organization. We have civilians."

There isn't much to say about that, and they walk the rest of the way to the command bunker in silence. At the last minute Lyme remembers the state of her appearance — stained, wrinkled, grimy from sweat and long wear — and wishes she'd thought to ask about a shower. The room she and Claudius had stayed in had a bathroom with a sink they'd used to scrub down quickly, but the water only comes on for ten-second bursts every five minutes and they'd had to get inventive quickly.

Claudius apparently has the same thought, combing his hands through his hair and wincing, but nothing to be done about it now. Their guide brings them to the door, has a word with someone inside, then ushers them through and slips back out.

Inside, the room is dim, lit only by the glow from the consoles and various screens, and it takes Lyme's eyes a moment to adjust. Claudius stands close but not crowding, and Lyme closes her eyes tight, counts to five and opens them again.

"Beetee?" Lyme bursts out without thinking, everything else flying from her mind. "But you were —"

"Hello, Lyme," Beetee says, adjusting his glasses in a way that's likely unnecessary except to buy himself a few seconds. "I didn't expect to see you here."

The last time Lyme had any eyes on Beetee he'd been in the Arena, one more obstacle between Brutus and Victory. The last time Lyme saw Beetee she'd needed him dead, nothing personal, that's just how the Games are played. Now Brutus is gone and here he is, slouched in a wheelchair, nearly invisible in his grey coveralls with eyes cast firmly away from Lyme's face.

Again the words come without Lyme's permission, this time fresh with the image of blood pooling in the water, a pale face looking up, unseeing, at the pink sky. "I'm sorry about Wiress," Lyme says, choking on the inadequacy but unable to let the moment pass without it. At the time — at the time she'd gritted her teeth, struck off another name from the list and moved on with nothing more than the half-irritated thought that at least Cashmere and Gloss could have taken out the real competition when they decided to make their suicide run.

There are no apologies in the Arena or afterward, but these aren't ordinary times, are they. Beetee coughs and fixes his frames again. "Perhaps we should focus."

Focus. Right. Focus on being here, in District 13, both of them alive in rebel territory when their friends are dead and Wiress' blood soaked the water and Brutus' coated the jungle leaves and Lyme takes a deep breath and then another. "Who else made it out?"

"Myself, Odair, and Katniss Everdeen," Beetee says, and Lyme swallows hard. By her count that's only half the people left in the Arena when Brutus went down and the message told her to run. Before she can ask, Beetee adds, "The others were taken into Capitol custody."

Lyme's mind spins — Enobaria, she hadn't even thought of Enobaria, her mind in such narrow focus on getting Brutus out that she'd forgotten about her Victor-sister who'd gone back into the Arena with him — and suddenly Claudius speaks up. "The Arena others, or all the others?"

"The Arena others," Beetee says, giving him a sharp, unreadable look. "A handful of Victors made it here in total, you included. We're waiting to hear on the rest. But now is not the time."

Misha. Lyme's girl was in the Capitol when she left, what does he mean _waiting to hear_ , what else happened, what's going on, where the hell is her Victor and what did Lyme abandon her to —

"Indeed." Another voice cuts through the babble, calm and cold and infinitely reasonable. Lyme has never gotten on with reasonable people, and her fingers twitch even at the tone but she knows to behave. "Beetee is meant to be here, the others too. You, on the other hand, are not. Would you care to explain how you found one of our hovercrafts?"

"I was contacted," Lyme says, snapping back to the present. "Via the mentor console, by someone with access to the mainframe. They told me to come to the hangar, and so I did."

"I see," says the woman, tilting her head. She has a predatory way of looking, quiet and assessing like she's prodding for weak points, and Lyme can respect that, from one hunter to another. Lyme might be half-crazed with grief and in desperate need of a shower, but she isn't cowed. "That was unauthorized, as I'm sure you can imagine, so now we're trying to figure out how to play this."

"I'm sure," Lyme says dryly, and if the president isn't going to mention the two days in limbo then neither will she. "But I'm here now, and I want to help. The Capitol needs to burn."

"I told you," says another voice in an undertone, and Lyme finally focuses on the third person, seated in the back in the shadows either by accident or for the purposes of skulking or dramatic effect, it's not clear. This time Lyme takes a step back because that's Plutarch Heavensbee, and this is so much bigger than she thought. "I've had her on my radar for years. All she needed was a push."

The grey-haired woman turns and gives Heavensbee a long, level look. "Yes, and yet she didn't turn until one of her own took a hit. That's not a push, it's a personal vendetta, nothing more."

"Madam President, with all due respect, I don't think we're in any position to be turning down personal vendettas," says Heavensbee, also very reasonably, and apparently Lyme and Claudius are just going to stand here in awkward silence while the other two have a confab as though they're alone in the room. "She's here, and she's the only link we have to District 2. I don't think we can afford to let this go." Heavensbee leans forward and gestures between the two of them. "Lyme, this is Alma Coin, President of District 13. Madam President, this is Lyme and Claudius of District 2."

The president folds her hands and rests them on the table. "So, Lyme of District 2, tell me why I should trust someone from the lapdog district."

Lyme doesn't blink, though Claudius lets out a short huff of breath that's as good as a snort from a Career. "Because I want it to end the same as you do. Because my kids get sent into death matches every year the same as yours." She stops, looks at the man from the Capitol and the woman from the only district to never send children to the Games, and Lyme's jaw tightens. What is the Head Gamemaker doing here, and how does he not have to justify himself after years of creating the traps for Lyme's kids to die in? "Or — Beetee's, or Odair's, or whoever else you have here with you," Lyme corrects herself. "We all have our reasons. What do you want from me?"

"I want assurance that this isn't a waste of time, and that you're not here to tear us apart from the inside," Coin says smoothly. "You understand, this is not a game of whose feelings have been hurt worse. I'm talking about the very real possibility that you are a loyalist agent sent here to destroy us."

Claudius growls, and Lyme shoots him a warning look but he brushes her off. "She can't prove she's _not_ an agent," Claudius snaps, and he's been locked in a small room underground when he's had a fear of dark spaces since he was five years old and now someone has attacked his mentor. Shit. "You can't prove you're _not_ anything, that's not how proving works. We've been planning this for years, way before the Quell or Everdeen or any of that. We just didn't know where to go."

"Claudius," Lyme says in a low voice, and he stands down, hands twitching at his sides. "He's right, though. Not everyone in District 2 is complacent, and not all of us Victors —" (Brutus putting on his Games face, letting Lyme taunt him into beating her bloody so he could learn how to shake off hurting a friend) "— had faith in the system. Some of us knew exactly what game we were playing, but nobody told us there was another set of rules."

She doesn't ask Beetee when he knew, doesn't ask him if he'd gone into the Arena with the expectation that a hovercraft would be there to get him out before the final cannon. Even if he had it hadn't saved Wiress, just like eleven years of training only saves roughly one tribute from Two out of six. The question of who else knew, how many Victors went back into that Arena with the hope of another way out, burns in the back of her mind, but that's not for Beetee and not now. That's for the cool, steely-eyed woman in front of her, and another time.

Coin nods, apparently willing to accept that much. "And what do you offer? You can't make me believe you have the key to turning the people of District 2 against the Capitol."

In the far reaches of Lyme's mind, dusty under decades of disuse and behind a few intentionally reinforced and bolted doors, memory stirs.

 _(Sitting at a desk in a classroom with the teacher walking between the rows, handing out sweet pastries that melted on the tongue but sat heavy and satisfying in the stomach at the same time. "These are from the Parcel," she said, stressing the word and its importance. "Does anyone remember why we get Parcels? Who sacrificed so we can get these nice things?"_

 _Another: watching the Games at school, sitting in the auditorium with her classmates in careful, breathless silence as a tall, blonde girl from Two battled the strong-armed, determined farmer_ _'s daughter from Ten atop a cliff. They all gasped when the girls went down; cries went up from the assembly when the girl from Ten clutched a rock in her fist and brought it down, down, down. A boy in front of Lyme threw his hands in front of his face, but the older boy beside him grabbed him and held him in place. "Don't you dare look away," the big boy hissed. "She's dying for you. They all die for you! Show respect and watch!"_

 _Another: sitting on a hard standard-issue cot in Residential while Astra — who_ _'d taught Lyme how to kiss and sat with her when she threw spears in a fury and told her, before her first kill test, that they'll be dead either way so remember that — packed her things with quiet resignation after failing her Field Exam. "I choked at the end," she said, shooting Lyme a humourless grin. "I didn't even lose a fight, I just couldn't take it anymore, all that quiet, all that mud. Nearly drowned in the river and that was it. Anyway, I'm putting my name in at the Peacekeeping Academy." She'd looked down at her hands, shaking days after getting pulled out of the mock Arena. "I mean, I was all set to die for my district, right? Least I can do is spend the rest of my life serving it. Just make sure you don't flunk out, one of us has to make it."_

 _Another: a letter in the mail from the girl Lyme had volunteered for, telling her that she_ _'d had her second child — a baby girl — and named her Lyme, in honour of the Victor who had given everything so she could live. Decades of hand-drawn thank you cards with round, careful lettering every Victor's Day at the start of August from kids the district over, one of whom grew up to stand beside her now.)_

"No," Lyme says, breath ragged, and shoves the thoughts away. "You won't turn them, not in time, not without a lot of work and even more blood. But maybe I can stop the slaughter."

"Explain."

Explain, sure she can explain; Lyme has spun stranger stories faster with a tribute's life at stake, only this time the Arena is hundreds of miles across and has thousands of people. Luckily the two days alone in her room gave her plenty of time to think. "If you try to go in with an army, you'll never take it. It's not just about the Peacekeepers, it's about the people. We're fighters, and not just the ones who trained for it. You try to win by force and you'll have a bloodbath, because everyone right down to the poorest quarry miner with the shittiest job is grateful for what he has and he'll fight for it. We learn to accept the gifts we're given and then defend them until we die. We'll block the road with corpses before we let someone take what's ours. It's not about the Capitol, not really. It's about protecting ourselves, our families, and if you go with guns, no one is going to look at who's holding them."

It's funny; Lyme can't remember the last time she used 'we' in a sentence about her district, that's more for Brutus and Odin and their whole branch of quarry-proud, honour-strong loyalists, but as she says it, something strange and bracing flows through her and lifts her head, squares her jaw. It will take more than a few berries and a girl on fire to turn Two, as stupid and naive as that is; the people of Two will defend their home with their last heartbeats just like the children they give away. Every ounce of that faith is misplaced and misused and taken for granted but it doesn't matter. Two is proud and Lyme is proud and President Snow may say that the Capitol is the beating heart of Panem but Lyme knows better.

President Coin raises an eyebrow. "It sounds to me like you're presenting an argument for razing the entire district from the air. Why should I bother to take a bunch of rabid animals when I can just put them down?"

"Because you can't win without us, either," Lyme says, even as Claudius swallows back an inarticulate squawk of rage. "We have the weapons factories and the military facilities. Destroy those and you cripple Two, sure, but you've doomed yourself for the cleanup afterward when you'll need those forces, those supplies. I'm not talking about a massacre, I'm talking about strategy. I can show you where to hit, what to take so you can have the district under control and the people won't know until it's too late. No riots. No civilian bloodshed. A pure military operation."

 _Traitor_ , hisses the voice in her ear, like it did in the days before Arena. _Traitor, traitor, look who's a traitor now._

Except this time it's too late to push it back and run away. This time Lyme looks at Alma Coin, leader of the rebellion, and doesn't blink. "Madam President, I will give you District 2, and District 2 will give you the keys to your Rebellion."


	3. Chapter 3

The grand tour of whatever facilities they're willing to let Lyme see before she proves herself ends at the requisition room. "You'll get a communicator cuff," says the sour-faced aide who apparently ranks low enough to rate 'show the traitor Twos around' duty. "You'll have access to broadcast communications, and be able to signal the president to contact you with anything important. Misuse of the communicator will result in official sanction and your cuff revoked."

That, at least, makes sense, since anyone in charge of an operation this size can't be running around answering every last trivial question when there's a war being planned. If it weren't a traitor's nest, Brutus would probably appreciate the efficiency. In a world where he isn't dead, anyway. Lyme shakes off the thought and nods in response before the silence stretches out long enough to be suspicious. Keeping focus is a little harder these days, especially now that the last of her stim pills have finally left her system.

"To clarify, you'll get one, but not him," says the aide, jabbing her finger at Lyme before waving a dismissive thumb in Claudius' direction. "You brought him, so you're responsible for him. Everything he does comes back on you."

"That's fine," Lyme says, even as she forces her shoulders down from the automatic bristling hunch.

"Don't worry about me," Claudius adds, and he keeps his tone artificially light and even manages a smile, but the breeziness of it fails to reach his eyes. "I'm housebroken and everything."

The woman slits her eyes at him. Apparently humour is not one of District 13's secret exports. "D," Lyme says, chiding, and Claudius makes a show of widening his eyes and holding up his hands in surrender. The aide watches, then gives a small, satisfied nod. It hits Lyme that Claudius very likely did that on purpose, giving her a reason to call him to heel so that the soldiers see she can be trusted to keep her kid in line. Maybe he'll fit in better than she thought.

"One other thing," says the woman, and she rolls up the sleeve of her uniform to reveal a line of numbers and letters — words? — inked in purple on her right forearm. "This is your schedule. Everyone is required to keep to it, it's how we make sure everything runs smoothly down here. There's a machine in the hallway, I'll show you how to use it, but the schedule goes on the right arm. Anything on the skin will interfere with the transfer process."

Lyme frowns. "All right," she says, waiting for the other side of it. Anyone who's spent as much time in the sponsor ring as she has knows how to recognize a 'but' incoming.

Funny enough, again Claudius gets there first. "No," he bursts out, and Lyme turns to stare at him but he doesn't break eye contact with the thin-lipped aide. "No way. We earned these, we're not taking them off just because you need to stamp _7:00 - Breakfast_ on our arms at just the right spot."

It might have taken Lyme a second but she's with it now, and she inhales with a sharp hiss. Her hand comes up to cover the tattoo encircling her right wrist without even thinking, and Lyme spent the first year of her recovery trying to burn or slice or abrade it off, but Claudius is right. The tattoo is part of her — and the only piece of her home district she has left.

"And how exactly did you earn them?" the woman snaps. "By murdering children, like the other savages in your district? I've seen your Games, you know, the one with all the twelve-year-olds. You really think that's something to be proud of?"

Claudius lifts his arm so his wrist sits at eye level, and he turns it to show off the circles of colour that represent the kill beads from his training bracelet years and years ago. "Technically these were all adults," he says, and before he'd mouthed off for show but this is real, all steel and poison in a death-eyed smile. "The kids I murdered for free."

The woman rears back, nostrils flaring, and Lyme steps in and lays a hand on Claudius' shoulder. "Claudius," she says, more alarmed now than chiding, because they did not come all this way and betray their district and their friends just to get shot in the head in the bowels of District 13 by a trigger-happy rebel.

Claudius actually shakes her hand off with a sharp jerk of his arm. He plants his feet and balls his fists and glares at the aide, who's now giving him an unimpressed blank stare. Plus there's a soldier guarding the door with one hand on his weapon, and the gun might be holstered but Lyme bets they'll take any excuse they can get to toss Claudius in lockup to take the Career down a peg.

" _Claudius_ ," Lyme says again, and she doesn't touch him but she puts every bit of authority into her voice. She can't pin him against the wall with one arm over his throat — not in front of other people and definitely not here, that's for them and not an audience and especially not one that wouldn't even begin to understand — and her heart hammers. Claudius might be a good kid and the easier of Lyme's Victors, but he's a killer and a fighter. The Program didn't train him to lie down and let someone step on his face. If District 13 is trying to push him into snapping, they might get exactly what they're aiming for.

Claudius exhales hard through his nose, but finally he takes a step back. "I'm not getting rid of my tattoo," he says, flat and uncompromising. "I'll put the schedule on my other arm and do whatever it tells me to do, but I keep what's mine."

Lyme looks down at her own arm, the swirls of black and the dots of red, orange, silver and gold that represent eleven years of learning how to kill and survive and all the years that came after.

She couldn't stand to look at it early in her recovery, after she'd clawed her way out of the Arena with the sick knowledge that winning was nothing like she'd built it up to be. No glory, no honour, nothing but kids choking to death on their own blood or blowing up into wet chunks of meat from stepping on a landmine or burning to death with a thick, sour stench that haunted her for months.

She'd seen the faces of the teenagers she killed every time she looked at her wrist, and the tattoo — meant to remind her of her belonging in the Village and mark her as family to the others who lived there — only served to remind her of exactly what she'd done to get there. Lyme covered it with long sleeves or custom-made leather cuffs most of the time at home, but had to bare her wrist whenever she went out in public as a show of strength and solidarity with her district.

The district she'd just turned her back on. Lyme could pretend it was Brutus' death that did it but that would be a lie. She's thought about it since the first time she or one of her friends lost a tribute, and every time afterward when a bright, fierce, determined kid came back home in a plain pine box. She thought about it whenever she turned on the news late at night and watched footage of riots or public floggings or heard rumours of food shortages and ever-increasing production quotas in the districts.

There's no way to know for sure, since nobody ever talked about it out loud, but while the others in the Village might be angry or disappointed by her defection, Lyme would bet her stipend that absolutely none of them are surprised. Her turning traitor was never really a question of _if_ or even _when,_ but rather _how_.

Here, though, the inevitability of Lyme's about-face is less clear-cut. Lyme never received a white card from Victor Affairs telling her who would be bringing her home tonight and what they expected to do to her while there. She never returned home to find her house burned to the ground with her loved ones inside in a tragic 'accident'. Lyme's treasonous leanings might have been obvious in amongst the loyalest of the loyal in District 2, but here in Thirteen they're all wondering why she bothered. Two Victors of her own, with sexual autonomy, personal freedom and anything she's ever wanted — all the privileges Lyme used as excuses to ignore the nation's suffering until she lost her closest friend.

 _A personal vendetta_ , President Coin said at their first meeting. Nothing grand or noble here, just a dog who finally turned on her master. It's not unreasonable for them to ask for a sign as a show of faith.

Lyme's tattoo marks her as a hero to her district and a killer both, and both are true and intertwined. She's failed three times as many kids as she's managed to save, and she holds the District 2 record for most kills in the Arena — but what does that even mean? So much blood, so much death, and the people at home love her and revere her but for what? She'd had a hard enough time remembering what it all meant back in Two; in here, anything Lyme built for herself she just ripped to pieces and set on fire.

"Claudius keeps his tattoo," Lyme says. Claudius raises his chin in defiance and the aide gives her an exasperated stare. "But you can take mine."

Claudius bursts out, "Boss!" at the same time that the aide starts to protest for the opposite reason, and Lyme holds up a hand to silence both of them. "This is not a negotiation," she says, raising her voice to counter any further arguments. "His stays, mine goes. That's the way it's going to be."

Turns out medical supplies are currently at a premium in District 13 given the state of the war and the number of operatives coming back from combat missions in need of attention, so they don't give Lyme any painkillers or local anaesthetic while removing the tattoo. Really, though, that's fine; the laser they use to burn away the ink hurts a little more than getting the tattoo in the first place, but it's nowhere near the most pain Lyme has felt in her life.

More importantly, every flash of pain reminds Lyme exactly why she's here and what she's doing, just like the tattoo artist's needle had done for her twenty years ago. She doesn't watch them at work, instead staring out at the far wall and gritting her teeth. Her breath comes short in her chest, and she lets them think it's from the pain and not because it feels like they've dug a hook under her skin and are ripping out everything that makes her who she is.

They do give Lyme a bandage when they're done, at least, and a small vial of ointment for the first few days. "You might experience a reaction with the ink from the schedule tattoo since your skin will be sensitive for a few days," the man warns her. "Nothing to be done about it, just don't panic when it happens."

Lyme nods and smooths the edges of the fresh white bandage, wishing she could cover it with long sleeves and trying her best to ignore the jiggle of her memory that gives her a rush of deja vu. With the removal complete, Lyme reports back to requisitions and receives her communicator cuff, which sits heavy around her left wrist and keeps drawing her gaze whenever she moves her arm.

She doesn't look at Claudius when she comes back to their shared room, and if he has something to say about it he decides to take the hint and keep quiet. The black ink of his own tattoo stands out sharp against the curve of his wrist, in contrast to the pale purple ink that marks the schedule along his other arm.

They'd given him a cloth armband to cover his tattoo but he's pointedly ignored it, leaving it on the small desk in the corner of the room. Instead, in a nod to District 13's utilitarian fashion sense and as a minor compromise, Claudius found someone with a pair of scissors and had them chop off his hair. It's not a military-buzz but it's shorter than he's ever worn it since his Centre photos, and whenever Lyme catches him out of the corner of her eye it makes her jump.

His haircut now matches Lyme's almost exactly, or at least the scissors-by-hand version done in a fashion-ambivalent military compound instead of by Capitol stylists right before the biggest Hunger Games in over two decades. Lyme doesn't ask him if he did that on purpose or if it's just a coincidence, and Claudius doesn't bring it up.

* * *

Selene will never admit it to any of her squadmates, but she's relieved when the only thing they're tasked with doing at first is trying to get intel on the location of the Victors. It's not like Selene regrets what they've done — not exactly. There's no point to it, they're here and they made their choice and there's no going back, and Selene has always been raised to look forward. She's always been good at it, ever since Petra won the right to volunteer for their Games and Selene suddenly had a whole new life ahead of her. No point in wondering what might have been if she'd managed to edge Petra out for the top spot. Selene had joined the Peacekeeping Academy and never looked back.

Of course, Petra's horrific Games-ending injury and the way she limped across the stage after her victory helped Selene move past that one, but she can do this too. She doesn't know what she would have done if their new friends asked them to infiltrate Snow's mansion and kill the president, of course, but Selene refuses to lose sleep about it. This is all confusing enough without driving herself to distraction imagining hypotheticals.

The mission isn't difficult, though — or, well. The objective itself is ridiculously tough; wherever the Victors are, the Capitol has their location on lockdown, and now that Selene and her squad are fugitives and presumed dead it's not like Rigel can get access the system and try to find intel. They have to do things the old-fashioned way, which means skulking around the Capitol and intercepting whatever information they can get without tipping anyone off. It also means no run-ins with Peacekeepers, no conflict with anyone Selene might have worked with or trained with at the Academy or the Centre, and that suits Selene fine.

She knows, logically, that they'll run up against each other someday. But not yet, and so Selene shoves those thoughts away for when she has time to deal with them.

Rigel and Marius are good at their jobs, even if those jobs now involve treason against the government they swore to serve. They gather bits and pieces of information here and there, staying under the radar and sticking to the seedier parts of town rather than the hyper-patrolled urban centre, and generally not attracting attention so they manage to avoid fighting any Peacekeepers.

In fact, they do such a good job of avoiding Peacekeepers that the first time Selene sees combat since joining the rebels is when she and Dash are ambushed by a local gang.

Ironic, really, since Selene cut her teeth on this sort of action back in the day — nobody starts a stint in the Scouts with guarding President Snow, that would be ridiculous — and now she's doing the same mop-up action as when she was a junior Peacekeeper. The gang will have seen the uniforms and assumed exactly that, rookie beat-cops on a foot-wetting mission, and figured they could get their kicks in without risking serious retaliation. Too bad for them, Selene has several combat ops under her belt and a whole lot of confusion that feels pretty good channelled into rage. The punks won't know what hit them.

Or so Selene figures, at least until the first lowlife lobs a homemade grenade at them. It misses but Selene cops the brunt of the concussive blast and gets knocked off her feet, her rifle flying out of her hands. She glances to make sure Dash is okay — he is, looking wide-eyed and shaken but he's got his rifle, so good enough — and then files that part away, concentrates on the fight. Her rifle is too far away to reach and night sticks are not gonna cut it, and so Selene casts about for a replacement.

Of all things, her weapon of choice is a light pole.

That should be completely ridiculous, but Selene is without her gun and the gang might not be trained or heavily armed but they're scrappy and determined and clever enough to rig up homebrew explosives, and the Centre always taught them, _you use what you can get_. The trainers always drilled it in; you could guide the Gamemakers toward giving you your signature weapon but there's no guarantee that they'll do it. Petra was a perfect example of that, in the end. And so when there's a fucking broken light pole lying there amid the rubble just in reach, Selene thinks, what the hell.

Selene grabs the pole in a double-handed grip and swings it through the air in a beautiful, perfect arc. It's been years since she held a sword or a staff — the Peacekeeping Academy doesn't teach weapons training other than firearms and truncheons, to build as clear a separation for the ex-Centre kids as possible — but it comes back to her like breathing. Selene nearly takes the head off the guy next to her, and as the blood splatters out ( _perfect for the cameras, they'll love that, nobody can resist an artistic spray of blood against the lens_ ) she whips around for a second swing. It connects solidly with the next guy's shoulder, which gives with a sickening _crunch_ , but Selene doesn't stop. She whirls again and finds another, and another —

It feels good. A little _too_ good. Selene is almost disappointed when there's no one else left to fight — all right, there's no 'almost' about it — and her heart is pounding and she feels a wide grin across her face —

 _Shit_.

Selene drops the pole and backs away. Her head spins, there are too many things happening and none of it makes sense. Conflicting streams of training churn through her mind. Scrapping with Petra in Residential, clenched jaws and blood on her fists — performing takedown drills on dummies in the Peacekeeping Academy until her muscles screamed, until she could subdue a target without hurting them — learning to kill — learning _not_ to kill — _go for the meat, thin the field_ — _you are a Capitol Peacekeeper you must be firm but gentle, you are a shield not a weapon_ — _you are a warrior, a tool, bringing pride to your district_ —

Selene the Peacekeeper wars with Selene the tribute trainee and suddenly she's not sure who's wearing her face.

"Selene!" Dash says, from close by. Selene blinks and registers his face as he hovers anxiously. He's pulled off his helmet, and by the whites around his eyes he must have called her name a few times before she finally heard him. "Are you okay? I saw you lose your rifle, I tried to get to you but there were too many —"

"I — no." Selene shakes her head. "I'm quite all right."

Dash's eyes go even wider. Selene replays, and — shit, she said that in a Capitol accent, didn't she, like they trained her in case she ever had to reassure a crowd of citizens here in the city.

"I'm fine," Selene says, forcing herself to Two Standard.

"Sure," Dash says, slowly. He hands Selene her rifle, though she watches his hands hesitate for a second before handing it over like he wasn't sure whether he should. Selene accepts it, lets herself loop the strap over her shoulder and cradle it on autopilot because she has no fucking clue what to do with herself right now.

(Her father's friend showing her how to use a rifle, too big for her eleven-year-old frame but Selene insisted. Dad, flinging up his hands in defeat; Ted, laughing, saying _why not, let's show the kiddo how it's done —_ )

"Let's go," Dash says, still in that careful tone. "I'll take point, okay? We're gonna head back around and rendezvous with Rigel and Marius, and then we're home free."

Rigel and Marius. Right. Selene nods, hopes she doesn't look too spaced out.

Later it'll cross her mind that not only does Dash take point, he leads them in a wide loop through the back streets and away from everyone, keeping them — keeping _her_ — away from any possible combat zones. Selene half appreciates the thought but also kind of wants to shoot something.

* * *

"What took you so long?" Rigel demands, yanking off his helmet once they're in the air. Marius says nothing, lets his CO handle it, but his gaze immediately fixes on Selene in the mirror above the cockpit dash. Selene busies herself with stowing her gear so she doesn't meet his eye.

"There was a gang," Dash says, which is not a lie but also not accurate enough for a proper sitrep. He very carefully doesn't look at Selene. "Had to take the long way around."

"Kid, minimizing casualties is a noble goal, but if they attack you —"

Selene doesn't want to do this right now. Funny enough it's the idea of Marius _concern_ that bugs her more than Rigel's frowning, and so she lets Dash handle the debrief. Selene wanders to the back of the hovercraft, leans her forehead against the cool metal bulkhead and tries to gather her thoughts.

It doesn't work very well.

See, Selene is a killer. She's been a killer since she was fourteen, on paper, and technically maybe even earlier, depending on how you define it. When she was nine her father taught her how to shoot his pistol, and once she'd proven her competency at the firing range, they'd take trips out into the mountains. He'd given her candy for every critter she'd taken down, she's pretty sure. At eleven, around when she'd started joining her dad and his buddies on hunting trips, Selene had started getting bored of the approved kills. She'd used her hands or borrowed knives and practiced for her animal kill test alone in the woods, rinsing her hands off in the stream before heading back for dinner.

Her Centre entrance exam had been a breeze. So were all the kill tests. If nothing else, she'd worried herself by not being disturbed _enough_ at having committed murder.

When Selene became a Peacekeeper, they trained that out of her as much as they could, but all their protocol was geared toward undoing Centre programming. The Centre might have honed Selene's killer instincts to a fine point and stoked her rages from flash tantrums into something deeper, darker, but they didn't plant the seed. Fortunately for Selene and her psych eval, she'd always been a good actress and managed to show the proper amount of reform.

Anyway, maybe pretending not to be a killer is ultimately the same thing as not being one for real. Either way nobody dies, right?

But now people have died, will die. People have died because Selene killed them without making the conscious decision to do so (the pole heavy and comforting in her hand, the rush of the fight in her blood) and the scary thing is, for all that Selene is a killer she's never been the berserker kind. Oh she got in trouble for violence — _excessive force, Selene_ , the trainers used to cluck at her — but it was always deliberate. She'd decided to hurt someone and fuck what the trainers said; it had never been a black-out-and-wake-to-blood kind of deal.

(She always got into more trouble than the berserker boys who snapped and smashed other kids' heads in, which Selene always thought was unfair back in the day. Now, of course, she knows why.)

That doesn't happen anymore, though. Selene does know how to follow orders.

This episode, whatever it was, scares Selene more than she wants to admit, maybe especially because she can't even explain what's wrong. It's not her first combat mission, not even her first mission working for the rebels, and she's trained for this. Not the treason, obviously, but the fighting, the snap decisions; she's practiced learning to reprogram her reflexes so she doesn't go for blood in those moments before her brain kicks in. The Peacekeeping Academy trained her as a soldier as well as a guard, she's _got this_ , honestly.

Then again, she hasn't actually done this a lot. It's an open secret among the corps that the Scouts division are the Capitol's secret police, but most of what they do is routine patrol or uneventful guard duty. President Snow doesn't actually need to send the Scouts through the Capitol to break down walls that often, and when he does, Captain Emin always picks a senior team. Selene hasn't done a lot of infiltration.

It's hard, because Selene was raised to be a tribute, and when she didn't get to do that, they took her apart at the Academy. They filed the edges off and put her back together as a Peacekeeper, and she'd adjusted to that fine — but now she's not that, either.

What if she, if not a Peacekeeper? _Rebel, traitor —_

 _No._

Selene presses the palm of her hand against her eyes. _Breathe. Focus._ They're doing good work here, with the rebellion. Better, maybe, than Selene had been doing before. They're going to save lives. It's better this way. She's doing the right thing. It's okay.

"All right there, Selene?" Marius' deep voice cuts through her thoughts.

Selene straightens, startled. Ah, shit. Marius must have finished piloting the course in for Eight and come back to see her still standing there, half blanked out. "Uh, some guy had a homemade bomb. Threw me around a bit." A split-second later Selene really hopes that Dash didn't try leaving that out on her behalf, or they'll know for sure that he's been covering for her. The scorch marks on her breastplate, at least, mean they'd figure it out eventually. "It's no big deal."

Marius raises his eyebrows, and yeah, he's always been remarkably resistant to Selene's bullshit but she also doesn't need this right now. He crosses his arms and leans against the opposite bulkhead. "Sure. That's why you're pale and standing here in your armour, even though we're halfway back."

"I hit my head. It'll pass."

A long pause, during which Marius studies her closely. Selene attempts to project an aura of not-crazy-just-mildly-concussed. Although it doesn't escape her that if pretending to have a concussion is the safer option than admitting what happened, maybe she's got issues.

Selene's head hurts, and not just from the blast.

"Actually," she says suddenly. Rigel and Dash have gone to sit in the cockpit, speaking in low, easy tones. It's just her and Marius here now. "There is one thing. Tell me why we're here. You said you'd explain more, later — and, well, it's later. So explain."

Marius raises one eyebrow again and regards her steadily for a long moment.

Right. Okay. Selene takes a deep breath and tries again. "I just mean — look, we agreed to join the rebellion. I agreed. That's fine. I'm still with it." And wow, look at both of Marius' eyebrows shooting up at that. Her hands clench into fists; she isn't explaining this very well at all, and if she's not careful Marius will pull her from active duty and then she really will lose it from cabin fever. "Look," she says again, modulating her voice to calmness. "It's not that I don't trust you, okay, it's just. I need to know why. For me. You and Rigel were pretty quick to throw in with them. What do you know that I don't?"

"Yes," Marius says, and his voice has gone surprisingly gentle. "You're right — I said I'd explain, and I haven't. How can I put this… Remember the pair of brothers we caught last year, out of One?"

Selene nods. "Our first field op." She and Dash had been starry-eyed recruits back then, dazzled by the glitter of the Capitol and doing their best not to show it. THey'd still been giddy and enthusiastic when they got their first rotation — and the first mission had been to gun down two fifteen-year-olds for the crime of running away from the District 1 Career Academy. The shine wore off pretty quickly after that.

Marius nods too, grimly. "We had orders to kill them. They were lucky; we don't always, and that's always worse, for them. Those end up as Avoxes if they're lucky, or Gamemaker experiments if they're not. Or worse. And for what?" Marius looks off into the distance, his large frame incongruous with his quiet manner. "The Capitol is built on corpses, Selene. And we — the Peacekeepers, protectors of the people — put them there."

Selene twitches at the sudden note of self-loathing in his voice. Marius has always been the level-headed one, the calm to Rigel's fire, but now there's an undercurrent of darkness. For an ex-Career, that's as good as a full-body shudder.

Marius immediately shoots her a pained half-smile, likely guessing her thoughts. "To be honest, I'm not sure why more Scouts don't turn," he says, quietly. "We see more — do more — than any other division. Snow uses us to do the Capitol's dirty work. It's because Two is loyal already, and the best and the brightest of Two's Careers go into the Scouts. we get the worst of the worst because if anyone can be trusted, it's us."

Selene stays quiet and doesn't comment on the irony, but then Marius lets out a soft, humourless laugh. "Then again, maybe mass Scout defection not such a far off possibility after all. There's an entire division dedicated to monitoring the Peacekeepers, and a big chunk of that is monitoring us."

"How did you stand it for so long?" Selene asks softly. She knows how she does it — she's been compartmentalizing since she was a girl, and it's always been easier for Selene to square away what should be done with what _must_ be done. But Marius, for all his staid professionalism, has always had more heart.

Marius shrugs, a gesture of helplessness rather than dismissal. "At first — it seems like they deserve it. They break the rules, we're just the weapon used to enforce them. But after a while, you start to think, what if the rules are wrong?"

Like giving up their heroes. Like letting Brutus die. Like shooting down two boys who only wanted to cross the district line for a chance at a new life.

Selene nods. "And so here you are."

Marius touches his chest in a wry salute. "Here I am."

* * *

Marius watches Selene disembark, a worried frown on his face.

Something's wrong. While, yes, he had promised to explain, he hadn't missed the part where she'd deflected his questions by neatly turning the conversation on its head and grilling him instead.

Dash comes up behind him. The kid is biting his lip, which means he's got something to say that he doesn't want to but thinks he should anyway. He's an open book, really, especially compared with Selene. Marius has never quite figured out if it's a matter of personality or a holdover from District 4 culture.

"What really happened out there?" Marius asks, rather than waiting for Dash to sidle into it.

"I'm not sure," Dash says. "We got jumped by a bunch of gang members with a shockwave grenade, knocked both of us off our feet, and by the time I got to her she'd killed three people with a broken light pole."

Marius gives him a long, incredulous look. "A light pole?"

Dash throws up his hands. "I guess it was the first weapon she could get her hands on. Her rifle got knocked away in the blast."

"What happened after that?"

"I gave her rifle back and led her back to the LZ. Um." Dash hesitates. "She didn't seem to quite have it together. When we left. I think she – went away somewhere, I don't know."

 _Went away somewhere. Shit._ Combat regression is rare, but not unheard of – it's why the Peacekeeping Academy only teaches batons and guns, both weapons not used in the Centre, and forces the kids back through dummy drills for months before they're allowed to practice on each other.

"Marius?" Dash says. "She seemed better once we got back, but I don't know…"

"You did well," Rigel says, rescuing him as he strides over from the hovercraft. "Go get cleaned up, get some food. See if you can get Selene to eat something, too."

Dash nods, looking relieved, and departs.

"Will she be okay?" Rigel asks Marius in an undertone.

Marius rubs his forehead. A lot of Centre Seniors don't have a very strong sense of self; a lot of it is wrapped up in the Games, and when they don't go in they have to build their identity up from the ground up again. In a way, being a Peacekeeper is one of the worse paths for them to take; the Peacekeeping Academy is almost as bad as the Centre in how it moulds its recruits. To go from the Centre to the Academy to the middle of a damned war — well.

It's not altogether surprising. Selene's still very young, but before this she'd shown no sign of any psychological complications. Seemed to be adjusting just fine to the new way of life.

Until now.

"I'll keep an eye on her," Marius tells Rigel, and leaves it at that. Which isn't an answer, but it's the only answer he can give.

* * *

Rigel shows up at Brutus' room with a tray of food and a buddy alongside. This guy is Two as well, also probably around Devon's age but twice his size and with a bright red beard that adds a few years to his appearance. "This is Marius," Rigel says. "He's my XO."

Marius nods at Brutus, amiable and professional all in one, and Brutus' memory niggles a bit. He might have seen the kid around at galas in Two, though he can't come up with anything solid. This is where Devon's magic memory would come in handy; he would have some charming anecdote about the time they chummed around or he caught one of them with spinach in their teeth, and everyone would laugh. But Devon isn't here, he's in Two mourning for his mentor, and Brutus bites down too hard on his spoon and the metal makes his teeth ache.

"We think you should come out with us," Rigel says after a few minutes of eating in silence. "See a few things. There's been — stuff that's happened, and I think the best way is to show you."

"You cleared for that with the boys upstairs?" Brutus asks. Just this morning one of the doctors caught him doing sit-ups over the edge of the bed and he thought they were gonna lecture him back to death.

Rigel and Marius exchange glances, and this time Marius speaks. "It's our hovercraft," he says. "Or, well, we brought it in when we defected and it's keyed to our biometrics through Capitol security. Nobody's keeping us here."

"Tell me something," Brutus says. Marius has the look of someone who likes to think long before he speaks, and Brutus appreciates that in a comrade. "Your CO here told me you turned because of me. That true?"

Again their eyes meet, and Brutus has never been a Peacekeeper, never worked that close in tandem with someone else, not when a mentor's job meant pitting friends and bond-family against each other for the sake of their tributes, but he sees it with the two of them. Not just command but respect and trust, soldiers on the field who've fought and saved each other's lives and know exactly who to count on.

Rigel nods at Marius, eyes closing for a fraction longer than a normal heartbeat, and Marius turns back to Brutus, apparently satisfied. "No," he says, the word heavy and final. "No, I think that started years ago. You gave us the push to do something about it."

It's funny, and probably stupid and selfish and half a dozen other things, but it soothes Brutus a little to know that two upstanding officers of the law didn't up and turn their backs on everything they'd sworn to protect just to save his life. "All right then," he says. "What did you want to show me?"

* * *

They fly him over the remains of District 12. It's still smoking, the coal mine belching up thick, black smoke and tongues of flame, but now and then the breeze pushes it all aside and gives a stark, shocking view of the piles burnt corpses and bleached skulls. Marius has the conn, and he steers the hovercraft in low, swooping arcs in an ever-widening circle from the main square. Once he drops to avoid a wind shear and the jets from the repulsors kick up clouds of ash, shoving aside the layers of grime and debris to reveal the smallest skeleton Brutus has ever seen, nestled in the protective curve of a larger one.

Brutus swallows acid, but he fights the urge to look away. This is death, this is sacrifice (this is — _wrong_ ), and his own discomfort is no excuse. Years of watching children die in the Hunger Games and never blinking have trained him for this, what a funny thought, and so Brutus presses his forehead to the plexiglass window and takes it all in.

Whatever Rigel had to show him, Brutus would never have guessed this. Never would have thought the Capitol capable of doing it.

"I had to see it," Rigel says. "I saw the footage, Thirteen shot a propo, but it's not the same. We left the kids back at the base and we came out here and —" He waves a hand. Brutus glances at him, and Rigel's face is pinched tight, his eyes hollow. "The rebels here have been pretty good about the whole thing so far, us being from Two and all, but you know what the worst part is?"

It looks to Brutus like a whole damn lot of worst parts, all rolled up together into one stinking shit-heap, but he waits to hear what Rigel singles out as the cherry on a mass-murder sundae. Rigel swallows, and he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a flat silver disc, engraved with the Capitol eagle on one side and the district logo on the other. It's a Peacekeeper's token, given out halfway through the first twenty to commemorate ten years of loyal service; Brutus recognizes it because he's handed them to proud soldiers before, when it was his turn to take part in the ceremony.

"We did this," Rigel says finally. "The Capitol gave the orders, but Two flew the hovercrafts. We dropped the bombs. I could tell myself it was only Capitol-born Peacekeepers who did it but they're too soft, they don't have the training or the stomach for it. You don't send people pressed into the service over gambling debts to strafe an entire district. You send people who made their first kill at fourteen and never stopped." Rigel grips the ceremonial coin tight, knuckles whitening, and exhales hard through his nose. "We did this, and it's not the only unforgivable thing we've done."

Brutus says nothing. Ain't nothing to say, and he's not one to fill an awkward silence because he fears the sound of it. Marius concentrates on his piloting, taking them up and out of Twelve at last, clearing the line of pine trees oddly unfelled by the fires and flying out across the open wilderness. Rigel turns the disc over and over in his hands, and when he looks up his eyes have the same empty exhaustion that Brutus saw in the mirror every time he lost a tribute.

Marius flies them back to Eight, but he doesn't head straight for the base. Instead, secure in their hovercraft's stealth capabilities, he takes them on a tour of the main production cities. There Brutus gets the second part of the tour, letting him take a good, long look at the devastation. Factories, apartment buildings, schools, hospitals — there are no military targets in District 8, no barracks or fuel deposits or anything else of strategic interest, yet there's hardly an urban centre without at least one pile of smouldering rubble and scorch-marked streets. The whole time Brutus never spies a single civilian, only the occasional lines of white uniforms patrolling the ruins.

"Peacekeepers keep the peace," Rigel says, quiet and tired. He's not looking out the window but Brutus gets the feeling it's because he doesn't have to. "I've captured runaways trying to cross the district boundaries and brought them in to be turned into Avoxes, and I've shot the ones who refused to comply. I've stood guard over interrogation sessions where it was clear they didn't know anything, but the inquisitor was bored that day. I've even run a few myself — though they took me off that assignment pretty quick because I didn't have the knack for it. The prisoners can sense it when their torturer's heart isn't in it, you see."

Still Brutus says nothing, but he can't help frowning. He's not a Peacekeeper but he is a Victor, and since he could walk he knew that the people of Two obeyed the Capitol and in return for their loyalty the Capitol granted them safety and prosperity. As a Victor he would never blame the sword for slicing through the belly of an unsuspecting tribute, not when it couldn't choose the arm who wielded it. Just the same, a quarrier, a Victor, a Peacekeeper, all of them had their roles to play, and no one was more important or blameworthy than any other.

Maybe sensing Brutus' thoughts — maybe having had them himself, in the past — Rigel glances at him with a small, wry smile. "Don't try to tell me I had no choice. There's always a choice, and all of us make it. You learn to compartmentalize, do the job no matter what it takes because you have orders and without order the country falls to chaos. Or maybe you swallow it up and let it eat you up inside until one day you snap and refuse a command and shoot your CO and end up in front of a firing squad made up of your own men. Or you push it down and you wipe it away and you count each day until your twenty is up and you can go live a quiet life somewhere and never think about it again. Or you embrace it, you believe every word about traitors and the need for order, and when you whip a child in Eleven for stealing an apple because the overseer worked them for ten hours straight without breaks you tell yourself they broke the law. I've seen all of it, worked with all those people."

"Or?" Brutus asks finally, feeling the weight of one last option in the following silence.

Rigel spreads his hands, a gesture of helplessness, or perhaps inevitability. "Or you wait. You do your job, you keep your head down, and you listen for any sign that things might change. Marius and I, we saw our chance and we took it, and that was you. This double-rebellion thing might be a mess, but I'm happy for my chance to fight."

A low headache pounds behind Brutus' eyes, but he can't tear himself away from the devastation until Marius pulls the hovercraft up and the view disappears from Brutus' window. "That's a lot to think about," he says finally. A copout, maybe, but also not a lie.

"I'm sure it is," Rigel says, and not for the first time Brutus appreciates his straightforward honesty. "Look, I don't think anyone is expecting you to strap on a gun and storm the mansion, but you're here, and this is where we are. My team, our mission is to find the Victors held in Capitol custody and get them out, bring them somewhere safe. If you want something to do, we'd be glad to have you along with us."

That alone is treason, of course. Then again, so is believing that anyone in custody is there for anything but their own protection, or that they don't deserve exactly what they're getting. Brutus reaches deep inside himself, digs around for the certainty that has carried him through his life and the deaths of so many children — looks for the well of relief he'd felt waking up and hearing that the Capitol had Enobaria, not the Arena — and comes up with nothing but dust in his fingertips.

He thinks of standing on the train to the Capitol after the Reaping, staring at himself in the mirror and letting all that rage and fear well up and spill over. Thinks of the Capitol — the President — looking at the Victors, the people who gave their lives and more for their people and their country, and deciding that they deserved to die, deserved to have that one sacred promise of safety and rest revoked. Brutus thinks of cracking the mirror with his fists and the blood dribbling over his knuckles and those three words whirling around his mind like pellets in a winter storm, stinging the insides of his mind and turning his thoughts to ice.

 _This is wrong._

The Victors in Capitol custody are not there for their protection. If Enobaria disappeared after they pulled her from the Arena, it's not because they're trying to keep her safe. It's because — after all those years of playing the game, of learning how to chew with razors in her mouth, after two Arenas and two death sentences and years of trying to shake the madness — Enobaria, like all the others, is no longer someone worth protecting.

For years, every time Brutus found himself slipping, every time he sat by a casket on the train home or stared at a pile of Centre files and found himself wondering which one he'd condemn instead of save, Brutus brought him back to reality with cold, simple logic. If he couldn't ground himself in patriotism and certainty of purpose, on those nights when his youthful fervour felt far away and misty, Brutus reminded himself that he did not make the world, he lived in it. This was reality, and in reality he only ever had one choice: this, or nothing.

Now, for the first time, and for better or worse, that choice had opened up into something greater.

Brutus glances at Rigel, who has turned to look out the window rather than watch Brutus and categorize his micro-expressions, an appreciated courtesy. "All right," Brutus says. "I'll help you get them out."

Rigel nods, military precise, betraying nothing in his expression. If this was a test and he was hoping that his childhood hero didn't yield to temptation or weakness and stayed the course, he doesn't show it. "And if, after that, you've done all you're comfortable with and you don't want any more part of it, that can be it. I'll convince them to let you stay in the safehouse with the others until it's all over."

No part of that sounds appealing, but really, it's not that much different from prowling his hospital room in the rebel base here. "Yeah," Brutus says. "Count me in."

* * *

 **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** Comments are amazing, I love all the comments, please keep 'em coming, but please - **do not comment to complain about the time between updates.** I'm writing this fic and posting it at the same time, and a monthly update schedule allows me to post consistently without worrying about falling behind. Complaining that you have to wait a month is very discouraging and demotivating for me. I appreciate your patience and understanding :)


	4. Chapter 4

District 13 might be oppressive and depressing at the same time, but at least the schedule is consistent, and given how everything else has gone to shit Claudius appreciates the play at stability. Not that it's a super exciting schedule, meals and designated shower times and stints at the gun range and education rooms in between his shifts working with the propo team, but at least it keeps him busy.

There are other Victors here in the rebel district, but Claudius avoids them as much as he can. He'd never been invited to any of the fancy Capitol parties outside his Victory Tour, and barring the sponsor ring in the 75th where they were all facing off against each other — and some, apparently, hatching secret plots that left the Ones and Twos shit out of luck — he's barely said two sentences to most of them in the eight years since his win.

Claudius wouldn't have anything helpful to say, anyhow. He has no advice for addiction or grief, or any of the other afflictions keeping the Victors mostly out of the way here in Thirteen, and he's pretty sure his face would not be a comfort for any of them. Claudius won the Arena that killed a bunch of twelve-year-olds and he managed to twist it around so that the districts took the moral blame for it, and the Capitol might have lapped up the districts' hypocrisy while ignoring their own, but nobody else will thank him.

The people of District 13 apparently have enough time to watch the Games in between their constant vigilance "the war never stopped for us" bullshit, whether live or the best-of reruns the Capitol puts out throughout the rest of the non-Games months, because they know Claudius. District 13 has no tributes, nobody dead at Claudius' hand, but apparently that doesn't matter. You'd think he personally waltzed into the district and started choking all their babies by the way they side-eye him — not the kids, who gawk up at him with the same wide-eyed awe they give all the Victors, but the adults old enough to remember — but frankly, Claudius doesn't give a shit.

Unfortunately, the longer they stay in Thirteen, the more Lyme starts to bury herself in her work, and there's nothing Claudius can do about it. At home he would drag her away from her desk, take her for a walk through the woods or up the mountain trail, or grab their swords for an afternoon of sparring and weapons practice. Here, not only is recreation time doled out according to the schedule and the outside blocked off to anyone but active duty soldiers for security reasons, but any time not working gives Lyme more time to grieve. For Brutus, for her friends and family back in Two, for the district she loved even if she claimed not to be a patriot and poked fun at Brutus for his blind devotion. Claudius can't very well tell her to stop working without giving her anything else to occupy herself with, that wouldn't be fair.

He can, at least, make sure she eats even when she tries to skip meals, and with nothing else to do for her Claudius makes that his duty. Lyme dislikes the common areas, the stares and the muttering and sidelong comments, and sometimes she brings her food back to her room but more often she doesn't bother at all. It's not that hard to keep track of whether or not she leaves her work-cave at mealtimes, and Claudius starts making a point to bring her food if she doesn't go get it herself.

The commissary workers like to give him a hard time about it, because of course why not. "If your handler wants to eat she should come get it herself," says the man doling out the day's exciting repast. "For all I know you could be double-dipping for yourself."

"Like you'd forget the six-foot-four woman with arm muscles the size of your leg," Claudius drawls. "She's busy doing work for your president, and it's not like this is gourmet shit right here. Let me bring her lunch."

"Sorry this isn't what you're used to over on Privilege Mountain," the man sneers. Claudius avoids rolling his eyes through sheer force of will, not like he'll get any credit for it. "I'll tell you what. You admit you're a murderer and I'll give you your food."

Whatever reaction he might be digging for, Claudius sure as the Reaping isn't going to give it to him. For a second he contemplates asking about the numbers — whether four adults, three in solo kill tests and one live target in his Field Exam, plus one accidental kill in Residential and the seven teenagers in the Arena put him even with soldiers who've seen heavy action — but there's no point. "I'm a murderer," he says, blithe and easy, though underneath it a strange, distant anger roils. That they think they can judge him for it would be laughable if it weren't so fucking offensive. "Now can I have my food?"

"That's all I wanted to hear," the man says, all false conciliation, and slides two trays across the counter to Claudius.

He doesn't mention any of this to Lyme when he bring her the food and taps her on the elbow to draw her out of her work-induced hyperfocus. "Eat, boss," Claudius says instead, and Lyme wrinkles her nose at him but she doesn't argue. Claudius parks himself on the edge of her desk, balancing the tray haphazardly in his lap and holding the bowl just below his mouth with both hands like some kind of savage, and keeps an eye out to make sure she actually eats.

Lyme catches him mothering, and while she shoots him an exasperated look for it, she doesn't fight him, and that will have to be good enough. Claudius leans back, kicks one foot out in a parody of idleness, and starts into a story about the latest propaganda mess the team has tried to come up with. He can tell Lyme isn't really listening, but if the sound of his voice drowns out whatever her own worst enemy tells her in the silences, Claudius will take the win.

It becomes a ritual after that. For reasons Claudius can't hope to understand, the commissary staff get a real kick out of him admitting he's a killer, and so from that day on whenever Claudius picks up meals for both him and Lyme, he has to start it off with the declaration. They don't do it when Lyme shows up with him, which says something about the fear she commands even with her tattoo lasered off and most of her personality hidden away under grief and workaholism as a coping mechanism, but as soon as he's alone they start back up again.

Claudius could tell Lyme, and she'd pull herself out of her funk and march right down there to stop them, but that's also kind of the point. In Two it's no shame for a Victor to fall back on the mentor; the mentor is their to protect the kid, no matter what the circumstances, be it an over-ambitious reporter or interviewer or even another Victor playing hardball a little too much. In Thirteen, though, they wouldn't understand. They'd see Claudius running to tattle to his mommy, hiding behind her and making her force them to be nice because he couldn't handle it. For all he knows that's part of the game, seeing how far they can push him before he cracks.

Claudius has seen a lot more than a few cafeteria workers having a go at him, that's for sure, and he's not going to lose it just because some of them make him repeat a fact that's not only true, but not even one that keeps him up at night. Claudius is a killer, yes, but he's spent years in recovery to move past it and this is not going to throw him back. These people don't give a shit that Claudius spent the year after his recovery dreaming of dead teenagers and asking Lyme if his mother had been right, if he really was a monster, and he certainly isn't going to tell them.

One day, though, the man asks the usual question with a little too much glee, and there's a challenge in his face that if they were kids together in Residential Claudius would be careful. On a Res kid it means goading because they have a bunch of friends hiding around the corner, ready to kick the shit out of you, and Claudius doesn't have to look to know that one of the tables in the cafeteria has the guy's buddies, ready and waiting to see what happens.

Claudius doesn't snap out loud, but the last line of patience inside him stretches and finally breaks. He can hear Lyme's voice in his head as clear as if she were at his shoulder, warning him to step off and not to take the bait, but funny thing — Lyme isn't here.

"I'm a murderer," Claudius says, only this time he snarls it. He doesn't go back to his pre-Games self in training, by far a less sane version of his actual time in the Arena, but it doesn't take much to discard the fake-casual air he borrowed all the other times. "My first time was when I was eleven, an older kid was bugging me and he wouldn't leave me alone, so I made sure he'd stop. I made sure all the other kids watching would know what happened when somebody crossed me."

This is only sort of true. That version would have involved much more actual thought than Claudius had been capable of in the moment, and he hadn't intended to kill the other boy, just make him stop. But Claudius had been young, too young for kill training, and he'd disappeared into a rage blackout like he always did. The boy had fallen, hit his head, but by then Claudius had lost control of himself. When he woke up the trainers were dragging him away and the boy's head was leaking red and grey all over the polished floor. He wasn't sorry to see the boy die but he hadn't meant to do it, and since he was eleven and the other kid goaded him into it and it was an accident, technically, the trainers didn't even punish him for it.

Of course, nobody here knows that. Claudius lets his gaze harden, narrows his eyes a little and takes a step forward. It's been almost a decade since he's had any image training but it doesn't ever fall away, and he might be a little rusty but that only means less subtle than he could be. There's a counter between him and the man serving the food but the guy backs up anyway, instinctual, and looks pissed at himself a second later.

"I can tell you exactly how many people I've killed," Claudius continues. "I can't tell you their names because I only ever learned half of them, but I can tell you how they died. I can tell you which ones cried and which ones begged and which ones pissed themselves." The trainers who still live in his head warn him to pull back a little, and so Claudius stops himself from giving actual examples — this part isn't a lie or an exaggeration — but he lets the guy see them on his face.

"I am a murderer," Claudius says again, his training still playing in his head. Make the point but don't hammer it in, don't oversell it. Repeat the hook, find the finale and end strong. "And you'd better be glad I am, and that my mentor is, and so are all the other Victors who are here getting treated like shit. Because good people? They don't win a war."

He takes his food and turns away without waiting for a reaction, because they trainers always told him to control the narrative. As long as he's walking away, it doesn't matter what anyone shouts after him, he'll still have won as long as he doesn't stop. That had been the hardest part to learn as a kid in training, not turning around and finishing the fight with his fists, but they taught him well and he still remembers how it goes.

Nobody says anything, and the next day when Claudius arrives for lunch the man shoves the trays across the counter with nothing more than a sour look and a muttered insult. _Don't push it_ , say the trainers in Claudius' head, even as the urge rises to do just that, to revel in his victory and grind his opponent's face in it — and so he takes his food without a word or even a mocking smile and brings it back to Lyme.

* * *

President Coin wants Lyme out on active duty eventually, and that means being rated for the field. It's a battery of physical, combat and psychological testing, none of which is new to Lyme except for the firearms training, and most of it easier than what she went through at 15 to make it through the midpoint Residential culling. Even so, it's been a long time since Lyme had any sort of serious training, and in a way, she almost enjoys it. Her mind screams less when her body is exhausted, and the challenge of learning a new skill keeps it from being too routine.

And so Lyme keeps her head down, learns to fire a gun and tries not to think about how many more people she could kill with this one tiny weapon than hacking them apart with a sword. She answers the trainers' questions and refuses to lose her temper even when they do their best to push her buttons.

The more she works, the less she has to think about the other Victors back home, what her mentor and her girl are thinking about her now that it's clear she won't be coming back. Working lets Lyme avoid the other Victors here in Thirteen, as well, though she hears rumours here and there of mental breakdowns and addition detoxing and all kinds of unsurprising and completely understandable horrors that the soldiers in Thirteen call "inconveniences."

Once Lyme takes a wrong turn and finds herself in an empty maintenance corridor, and she'd leave right away except there's a voice inside. Lyme frowns, pauses in the entryway in case she needs to call medical, and focuses on trying to make out the words.

"Start with what you know is true," says the desperate whisper, over and over again, combined with a soft _thump_ that means someone is rocking back and forth and hitting the wall on the way down. "My name is Katniss Everdeen. My home is District 12. I was in the Hunger Games —"

The litany continues, and Lyme closes her eyes and leans her forehead against the wall. She recognizes the edge of madness, falling back on simple facts and mantras to keep hold of an ever-slippery sanity, because she's been there herself. Lyme's trainers taught her the same trick after her Field Exam, when she'd used small cuts all along her forearms to mark the days and kills, and given her something more mentally effective. After her victory, Lyme's mentor had reinforced the strategies and given her new promises and truths to remind herself.

A year ago Lyme mentored Cato in the 74th, where Katniss Everdeen killed him after letting the mutts tear him to pieces for hours and hours. District 2 hates Katniss more than any other Victor in recent memory, not only for the treason she inspired but for letting their tribute suffer when she could have ended it right away. Now she's lost nearly everything, and the rebels that saved her so she could champion their political cause apparently don't care if she crams herself into service hatches and hits her head off the wall as long as she looks pretty for the cameras when they need her to.

District 2 hates Katniss Everdeen — Claudius included, though for him it's more disdain than anything else — and Lyme certainly could, if she wanted to. Katniss killed her tribute and won the double victory that Cato and Clove could have had, if only. Except that Cato slashed Peeta Mellark along the thigh ( _I know where I cut him_ ) and left him to bleed out or die of infection or dehydration over the next week without a second thought. Misha, Lyme's first Victor, killed a boy with a pregnant girlfriend back home and sat by feigning boredom for the cameras while her district partner tortured the kid from District 12 for even longer than Cato took to die. Where does it end?

Lyme could hate Katniss Everdeen, if she wanted to, and in those long hours while Cato screamed and the pair from Twelve joked about whether they'd freeze to death in the night chill before Cato finally gave up fighting, she probably had. But after that the grief and exhaustion fell over her, muffling all else, and by the time Katniss showed up for the Victory Tour in Two, pale and drawn and terrified, Lyme reached deep inside herself and found nothing but pity. Everdeen is just a kid, scared and traumatized and homeless with a giant target on her back, and her mentor might have saved her but he had no clue how to put himself back together, let alone anyone else.

The Quarter Quell had revived some of Lyme's anger, but less at the girl herself and more about the hypocrisy and hysteria that surrounded her. Hard to care about an unborn baby that Lyme is still convinced never existed when her best friend was slated to die, but that didn't make it the girl's fault. Now, as Lyme stands at the mouth of the junction and listens to Katniss Everdeen, Mockingjay and hero of the people, sob her way through a list of personal traumas, pity wins out again.

Katniss' own mentor, the rumours say, is drying out in a cell somewhere in District 13's low-budget zero-empathy form of rehab, but Lyme doubts he'd be in here with Katniss even if he wasn't. Haymitch is good in the life or death but shitty in the aftermath, like a lot of outlying mentors who never had the training for after the Arena. A better person would go in there, pull the girl out of the ball she's likely curled herself into and hold her while she cried. Let her know that at least someone in this concrete tomb gives a few shits. Lyme is a Career and an enemy, as far as Katniss is concerned, but she's also a mentor, and she knows how to give comfort to someone who'd resist the effort on principle. She could probably help, if she tried, more than anyone from Thirteen, anyway.

But Lyme is also tired, and the thought of dipping into her own reserves to provide emotional support for a near-stranger when every time she shuts her eyes she sees Brutus convulsing on the ground or imagines Nero's disappointed stare or Misha demanding _why did you leave me_ is more than Lyme can handle. There's no basis of trust between her and Katniss Everdeen — quite the opposite — and Lyme knows absolutely nothing about her based on what she's seen on the television screen. While she could help simply by virtue of the fact that nobody else apparently gives a shit, the amount of work to do it is far too much.

In the end Lyme leaves her there, walking softly so her footfalls don't give away her presence, and she avoids that corridor from then on in case that's Katniss' favourite meltdown spot. Guilt pricks at her a little bit for leaving the girl alone, but honestly, with all the regret and shame that follows Lyme and sucks at her soul daily, this particular iteration can get in fucking line.

* * *

The next day Lyme wanders into the room Beetee has sectioned off for his weapons-experiments, hands shoved hard into her pockets. Her training finished for the day and there's an hour yet to dinner, and Lyme could make herself useful around the base except that today she really doesn't feel like it. She misses home, misses the community of people who understood her even a little. And since the other Victors are all busy either detoxing or crying in maintenance corridors or staring blankly at walls, that leaves Beetee. They haven't spoken outside meetings since Lyme arrived in Thirteen, and Lyme can't tell which of them has been trying to avoid the other more, but she would prefer not to add cowardice to her list of sins.

Beetee sits in his wheelchair behind the table, assembling small, handheld devices out of bits of metal and plastic and wire. "Bombs," Beetee says without looking up from his work as Lyme sidles in, moving in slow circles toward the table rather than taking a straight path. "Inelegant, of course, I'd be embarrassed to let these out of the workshop, but it's something to pass the time. Care to join me?"

Lyme finally reaches the opposite side of the table, though she doesn't sit yet, choosing to stand and drum her fingers against the metal edge. "Will I blow us all away if I touch the wrong thing?"

"Of course not, these aren't live."

Lyme doesn't bother to figure out whether she's disappointed. It doesn't matter anyway. "Sure, why not."

Beetee slides over a handful of parts. "We'll start with the detonator," he said. "It's built separately from the rest of the device, so there are fewer interconnecting parts and less fiddly wiring to worry about. Not that I'm implying anything about your dexterity." He finally glances at her, and Lyme has worked alongside him for almost twenty years and expects the laugh lines around his eyes - the biggest tell he has that he's mocking someone, since his voice stays neutral and dry almost constantly - but there's nothing. His skin is smooth and his eyes are dead and his hands are going through the motions, fitting the parts together without any purpose. Lyme knows that feeling.

She follows his directions, and Lyme might know nothing about electronics but she knows how to follow orders, and it's not that different from assembling complicated weaponry as a kid in the Centre. Her hands do what she tells them to, and a part of herself sits back, detached, and watches as she builds bomb after bomb, functionless and useless, and sets them on the table. Beetee doesn't talk except to give direction or tell her when she's made a mistake - he's never been one to fear the silence - and so they sit and the pile of dud explosives grows.

Lyme finishes another, and she turns it over in her hands, feeling the ridges along the sides. Here they are, two killers - one trained, one learned, neither more or less the murderer - making empty bombs that would do no more damage to an enemy than throwing a dinner plate at their heads. Lyme looks at the device and laughs, the sound scraping raw and strange in her throat. "There's a metaphor in this somewhere," she says, holding it up, and Beetee lifts his glasses to eye her. "You know, maybe if I gave a shit."

She tosses the bomb on the desk, where it lands with a dull thud. The detonator snaps off and skitters across the table's surface.

After a moment Beetee picks it up and affixes it back in place with even, precise movements. "I might take a crack at that metaphor for you, if we could get any liquor around here."

Lyme snorts. She wasn't always welcome at the Victor drinking games but she did drop in to play a few hands now and then, and she remembers Beetee once he's had a few in him. "You forget I've seen you drunk," she says, picking up a piece of wire and curling it tight around her fingers. "You get mean, not poetic." She pulls the wire harder, the plastic digging in until her fingertips turn purple and the skin deadens. "Not that the rest of them could tell."

Beetee huffs a breath. "Guilty as charged."

Lyme's pulse thuds in her fingertip with every heartbeat and at last she lets the wire slip loose, the colour draining back down to her whitened finger. "Got something more complicated?" she asks, and Beetee nods.

They work in silence, which Lyme prefers to the harsh military alpha-jockeying of Thirteen officers, and to Claudius' pained, awkward attempts to get her to talk about her feelings. It's her default, always has been, except now it reminds her of late nights with Brutus, both of them bent over their work, stopping only when one of them declared the other must be tired. Lyme draws a sharp breath, and Beetee's fingers still over his loop of wire but he doesn't acknowledge her, doesn't point out her slip.

Lyme wets her lips. "I need to ask you something," she says, and Beetee nods. "In the Arena -" he stills again, letting out his air in one long, slow release, and Lyme would apologize for breaking the unspoken rule but she has to. She has to. "When you made the plan, with the coil, on the beach. You knew Brutus and Enobaria were hiding in the tree line."

Beetee taps one finger against his thumb, repeating the motion absently. "Yes."

"But you said the plan out loud anyway. I watched you. Were -" Lyme closes her eyes. Brutus' face as he listened, puzzled and annoyed as always when understanding strayed outside his grasp, floats in her mind. "You were trying to warn him, weren't you? To get him and Enobaria down to the beach so the hovercrafts could pick them up with the others."

A light clunk of plastic as Beetee sets down his contraption. "He's still dead," Beetee says, neutral, neutral, always neutral now, and Lyme understands that too, having given everything away and the rest taken, the need to keep some things close. "Does it really matter?"

Except that when someone is dead, sometimes the only things that matter are the things that shouldn't. Lyme doesn't open her eyes, afraid of what she'll see. "What do you think?"

"I think you want me to tell you what you want to hear. Which I'm willing to oblige, if you'd like."

Lyme flinches. "I don't even know what I want you to say."

Beetee sighs. "I'm afraid I can't help you there. I'm good with these -" he rattles whatever's in his hands - "not with people. Even less about what constitutes 'the right thing'."

And there, underneath the careful blandness of his voice is something else, something dark and dangerous and tentative, the first step along a razor's edge. Lyme opens her eyes and Beetee watches her, his expression cautious. She thinks, absurdly, of the first hesitant alliance negotiations before the Arena, of teasing the sponsors to see who made a movement back.

Both of them are here, deep in the belly of a long-dead district, performing the machinations of a woman with no more displayed compassion than the man they're fighting to overthrow. Lyme swallows. "Neither am I," she says.

Beetee's mouth thins, and he goes back to his work but there it is, the first thread between them. They're here because they believed it would make a difference. They're here because they put their trust in change, that if they did enough, fought enough, it would slay the dragons and keep them from their nightmares.

Unfortunately, the answer to that might take a while.

"For the record," Beetee says mildly, "I was trying to warn them. I thought they deserved a chance as much as any. It wasn't my place, or Plutarch's, or our esteemed Commander's, to say whose suffering was enough to merit the opportunity to mitigate it." He lifts one shoulder. "But, as I said, it didn't matter in the end."

Lyme has been a mentor longer than last year's Victors have been alive, and this is the time when she should find something comforting to say. Something like the effort made a difference, or someone believing that Brutus and Enobaria deserved to live is almost as good enough as it happening for real. The problem is that the words turn to ash and crumbled bone in her mouth before she even finishes the thought.

She glances at Beetee, who refuses to come up to the commissary for meals and who ignores most meetings unless they suit him, because quiet disobedience is the only power he has left. Of course they respect his genius here, so no one ever says a word. Lyme wonders whether he wishes someone would.

In her head, Brutus writhes under the pain of the neurotoxic fog like he did on the monitors in the control centre, dead like a dog because Beetee's plan worked. Because the thought of escaping a death not one of them deserved had cracked the impregnable Brutus wall of duty and caused him to doubt just long enough for the Capitol to decide to take him out. Because Beetee made a promise that not one of his superiors would have followed up on, or Enobaria wouldn't be trapped in a Capitol torture cell with the rest of them. Because for once, the man who lived his life by the principles of balance and equivalence and the careful weighing of options privileged life and fairness over the logical option.

Beetee offered Brutus mercy, and the Capitol murdered Brutus for it. Lyme is certain of less things now than the day she first stood in the Reaping Square at the age of twelve, but she knows this: it would help no one, not even her own selfish comfort, to tell Beetee what happened. He's already paid enough.

And if they're going to be comparing levels of complicity and blame regardless of intention, Lyme would have to scrub the blood from her hands for days to reach the skin. "Pass me the wire strippers," Lyme says, and Beetee does.

* * *

They put Petra on camera with a minimum of fuss and frills, basic makeup with her hair pulled back, white suit crisp and trim without ornamentation. The outfit is everything her stylists used to rail against, severe lines that took away from the softness of her face, the bright white — white for Peacekeeping, for rebirth, for truth and hope and President Snow — washing out her pale skin. Petra doesn't care. For the first time in years she feels herself again; she stands on her own power, cane in hand, and no one hovers at her side or offers to give her a chair. The cane grounds her, lets her stand ramrod-straight with her shoulders back and head high, and Petra holds tight to the good, strong District 2 wood and feels the connection to home. A low ache throbs in her knee but it doesn't matter, none of that does. Only that she's free to be herself again, to be useful.

This is not a live broadcast; the Capitol is still deciding what information will be safest for the people to hear, and when. For now Petra will say what they tell her to say when they tell her to say it, and the broadcasters will save the footage for the appropriate time. A good, responsible system, keeping the people informed and encouraged without caving to the demand for constant updates of classified information, and Petra is proud to be part of it.

Years of practice let Petra read her lines from the teleprompter without ever looking like it's rehearsed. The words aren't exactly natural — a Capitol speechwriter penned them for her, not Brutus, and so they're nothing that Petra or anyone from Two would actually say — but Petra sells it, because this is her job and she will not let the president down. Words of loyalty and strength and comfort, words that will give the people hope in a time of fear and uncertainty.

She only stumbles once. _Your heroes died for your sins_ , say the stark white words on the small black screen, and Petra has practiced this, she has stood in front of eleven crowds and stared at twenty-two dead faces projected at multi-story heights with their families dead-eyed and accusing beneath them, she knows how to talk about death and loss without letting it shake her, but. But.

These aren't tributes whose names she learned and then immediately wiped form her memory and replaced with faceless district numbers. This time it's her mentor tallied among the dead, the man who used to stroke Petra's hair and force her out of bed to walk while she screamed at him, who stretched out her leg when it spasmed and let her stab him when she needed to remember what blood looked like. Brutus, proud and strong and blameless, who'd died in a second Arena because the people disobeyed.

For the first time, the words stick and that scrabbling, helpless panic rises in Petra's chest. It's not live, they can always call "Cut!" and reshoot, but that feels like failure and Petra won't let them. She can't. Brutus is dead and the only thing to do is keep moving, keep trying, make sure that everything he fought for, every sacrifice he made, had meaning.

"Your heroes died for your sins," Petra says. She raises her chin, presses her mouth in a hard line to stop the tremble running along the line of her jaw. Her eyes burn and the lights will catch the sheen, but Petra doesn't blink it away, doesn't toss her head or use any of her tricks to get rid of tears without letting the cameras see. Not this time. The best victories are when the tribute bleeds but wins anyway, when the audience can see exactly how much the battle cost. "Remember that. Don't let it be for nothing."

She finishes out the gamut of speeches, half a dozen prerecorded messages that the president will be able to use when needed, without another hitch. When they call an end Petra's leg aches in three places and all she really wants to do is collapse and hide in a pile of pillows until this feeling goes away — wants Brutus here to wrap his arms around her and pull her in against his chest — but she can't. Not when President Snow could be watching her right now. He chose Petra for her strength, and she can't betray that.

And so Petra takes several long, deep breaths, and she digs her fingernails into her palms and shifts most of her weight to her good leg as the crews finish up. Odin waits for her at the door, at least, and finally they tell Petra she's good to go. She joins Odin, and he doesn't put his arm around her or anything else that would telegraph her weakness but he lays a hand on her shoulder, and that's almost enough.

The Peacekeeper honour guard that steps in beside her wear their helmets with faceplates down, and Petra wishes they would let her see them. It would help, maybe, to meet people from home, but Peacekeepers are not individuals when they're on duty and Petra can't ask them to break the rules. Not here, not when the world is on fire.

Still. Petra glances at the soldier beside her, tall and broad, like Marco her district partner had been. Definitely Two, not one of the recruits from the Capitol or out in the districts. "Did you hear the speeches?" she asks. He — she thinks, anyway — nods his head just enough to show her he's listening since she can't see his face. "So? Will the people be inspired?"

"They will," he says, but doesn't volunteer anything else and Petra doesn't go fishing for reassurance.

Something about his voice triggers a weird catch in Petra's memory, though she can't place him. He reminds her of someone, not that that will help when Petra has met hundreds of Peacekeepers at various galas and benefits and who knows what, but even so. They're still walking through the mansion, Petra struggling a little more than usual as her feet sink into the plush carpet and her cane doesn't give her as much purchase. She still can't believe how big the place is.

"Are we the only ones here?" Petra says finally. "Guests, I mean. Or are there others?"

Odin's hand squeezes her shoulder. "Petra, my dear, let's not ask questions that might compromise security."

Petra flushes red, cheeks burning, and she curls her fingers around the head of her cane and fights back the wash of shame. She knows better than this, it's just — staying in the mansion is an honour, one she asked for, even, but Petra misses home and the company of her fellow Victors more than she thought she would. Here in this enormous mansion with no one but Odin and Ronan — Odin mostly silent, still grieving, Ronan quiet and thoughtful — Petra feels the wide, empty corridors and echoing rooms deep in her gut.

"Don't worry," says his companion, on Petra's far side next to Odin. "There are other guests, but they're in another wing. You might meet them later, although of course no promises."

"Of course," Petra says immediately. And maybe it's silly, but even that small conversation settles her a little bit. These are her people; they've fought and killed the same as Petra, they know what she went through and they're here to protect her because that is the job they signed up for. If they can stay here with her while their friends and comrades leave to fight a war, Petra can do this, too.

There's a meal spread out for them when Petra and Odin return to their suite, and Ronan sits at the table having already started eating. "Just had to taste it first and make sure it wasn't poisoned," Ronan jokes, and Petra laughs.

It's not the opulent feast that the Capitol used to serve, tables overflowing with so much food that one bite from each dish would more than fill you up, but Petra is glad. Good, solid fare is all she needs, and anything more would feel shameful since the rebellious districts have been refusing to send food and good people are going hungry. There's meat, and vegetables, and some kind of flaky pastry filled with something creamy and savoury, and that's more than enough to fill her stomach.

"To Panem," Petra says, raising her glass in the usual invocation. Ronan and Odin echo, the Peacekeepers stay silent at the door, and an Avox steps in close to offer Petra a hot towel for her hands before she starts. Petra takes the towel, then wars with herself for several moments as the Avox nods and retreats back, ready to slip away unnoticed once Petra's attention passes.

The Avoxes are traitors, criminals granted the mercy of a life of service rather than one of imprisonment or execution, and no one is meant to talk to them. Except Devon does, she's seen him; he has a nephew back at the quarries who was born unhearing, and the rest of the family learned a beautiful, complex language of hand-signs and facial expressions in order to communicate. He tried it with an Avox once, and said she all but burst into tears, her face staying neutral and even but her eyes welling over and the tears running long tracks down her cheeks.

"The Avoxes can hear fine, I know," Devon said when he told Petra about it once, both of them curled on the couch and sipping at giant mugs of thick hot chocolate as the snow fell outside in slow, fat flakes. "But it's — I don't know, it felt more respectful than using a language she couldn't anymore."

Petra had been aghast at the story, at the careless way that Devon had flaunted one of the most staple Capitol society rules, but then she'd imagined a life of silence and no one ever being willing to look past it. She'd thought of her leg and her cane and the pins in her knee and metal plate in her hip, and how every single conversation in the Capitol began with someone commenting on her bravery ( _you poor little thing_ ) or asking if she'd like a chair.

Of course, Petra earned her injury through valour and a lifetime of dedication and training, not punishment for treason, but weren't the ends the same?

"Thank you," Petra bursts out finally, and in a moment of terror-laced bravery she raised her hand to her mouth and extended it back forward toward the Avox, almost as though blowing a kiss. _Thank you_.

He doesn't respond, as Petra expected he would not, and she turns away to let him leave, a strange pounding in her chest. Ronan and Odin glance at each other but don't comment, leaving Petra alone with her thoughts to wonder what's gotten into her.

Most of the time Petra barely registers the Avox presence around her — Odin says acknowledging them only upsets them, since they could get in trouble for the interaction — but today, everything jangles. No news of Brutus, whether they'll release his body to be buried at home in the Field of Sacrifice, or of Enobaria. Nothing about Lyme and Claudius, where they disappeared and if they're really traitors after all. Nothing but the mansion, luxurious and welcoming but at the same time so remote and strange.

Petra itches from the lack of action, the need to _do something_ , but with the Capitol on high alert they've even locked down the president's enormous gardens, Peacekeepers politely informing her it's not safe for her to take walks outside. The whole world feels like it's holding its breath, and Petra has never enjoyed waiting. She can, and she will, just as she spent three days in an empty room with one of her classmates while the speakers played constant noise to keep them awake, but normalcy and routine come a little harder now.

Well, there's nothing for it. They will beat this. They have to. Petra pushes away thoughts of Brutus, how Odin took his spot at her side but he doesn't tease her, doesn't ask if she wants him to cut her food into tiny, bite-sized pieces for her so she can bare her teeth and threaten to stab him with a fork, and scoops herself a serving of potatoes.

* * *

President Coin summons Lyme for an impromptu meeting in the middle of the afternoon. Lyme leaves the strike teams, where she had been poring over aerial maps of District 2 and doing her best to locate munitions factories — a frustrating and not particularly worthwhile endeavour, since those types of facilities didn't exactly invite Victors for ribbon-cutting ceremonies — and heads to the president's office. The summons didn't mention anything about Claudius, and Lyme decides not to detour and fetch him. He's working with the propo team for now, the best job they could think of for him given his official talent of videography, and working with Plutarch might be frustrating but at least they're making progress.

When she enters the lights are dim, as usual. Lyme still can't figure out if it's a power conservation issue or if Coin prefers to look mysterious and brooding in the semi-darkness. "Madam President," she says, and takes the chair nearest the door at Coin's gesture.

Without preamble, Coin slides a small tablet across the table with a video message paused on the screen. Lyme frowns, picks up the device — and freezes, because that's her mentor's face staring up at her. He's wearing his official expression, not quite the mute scowl of his Arena days but not the patient kindness of the man who found Lyme the snarling, self-destructive, suspicious young Victor and taught her how to be a person.

President Coin folds her hands on the table and cocks her head to the side, giving Lyme the impression of a predator trying to decide how hungry it is. Lyme schools her expression, swallows without letting the twitch reach her face, and hits play.

It's a propo, urging the people of District 2 to come together in unity and solidarity against the rebels trying to tear the country to pieces. Fairly standard, and not entirely unexpected, though the choice of Nero as messenger is not one Lyme would have made. He's as loyal as they come on paper, yes, and Nero sells the bit because he's a Career and a Victor and he's been parroting other people's speeches since he was fifteen, but Lyme knows better. Nero was the first person ever to admit to Lyme that the Games were wrong, that a mentor's job might be a harsh reality but that didn't make it right or good.

Maybe they used Enobaria against him, leveraged her safety against a show of his loyalty. Maybe Petra was too young, Emory too soft, Devon too flippant. Or maybe Lyme leaving gouged a bigger hole in her relationships than she thought. In the end it doesn't really matter why they chose Nero and why he agreed, only that they did.

After the standard buzzwords of unity and strength, Nero shifts tactics. "There will be some of you who question, who hear the words of the traitors and doubt, and I ask you to remember this. Once you leave, there is no coming back. A Two's loyalty is paramount. It is written into our very history, from the Dark Days and beyond. To forfeit that means to forfeit everything we are."

Nero said the same thing to Lyme once, back in the day, without the patriotic colouring. They lived in a world where people gave their children to the Arena and the mentors helped that happen, and nothing would change that. What's more, fighting it would only get her killed, and anyone she loved. Treason was a one-way street, Nero warned her, even as Lyme's chest burned with caustic fire. What would he think of her now? she wonders.

A moment later, Lyme doesn't have to.

"To those who have already turned against your district and your people, I want you to think. Think of the loved ones you've hurt, the family you abandoned. Think of the children dead in the Arena, their sacrifice made nothing by your actions. Think about all that and ask yourself if this is worth the pain you've caused. It's too late to take back what you've done, but not too late to make it right."

He ends the propo with one last broad statement to the people of District 2, asking them to hold on to each other, but Lyme doesn't hear it. It takes Lyme an embarrassing handful of seconds to realize the video has ended and she's still staring at the table. She catches herself, snaps her mouth shut, and looks up with flaming cheeks to see President Coin regarding her with a cool, remorseless pity.

"So you see," says the president. Lyme says nothing, hands curled into fists on the tabletop. "This message was sent out to households in District 2, but also to our back channel here. They wanted someone in particular to see it, it seems."

Lyme struggles to breathe, to form words. "I haven't changed my mind," she says, casting around for a foothold on the sheer surface of the cliff around her. "If you're trying to see if he got to me —"

"On the contrary," Coin says smoothly. "Given the fanatical nature of your district, I can't imagine any of this was news to you. You can't have expected them to think you anything but a traitor, yet you came anyway. I commend you for it. No, what I'm asking you now is what you think we should do."

Why me? Lyme wants to scream, except that she came here for exactly this reason, to give the rebellion a direction to take that didn't include firebombing District 2 to the ground. "We respond," she says, thinking fast. Really, this isn't much different than working the floor, arguing with noncommittal sponsors while her tribute slowly bleeds to death. "Not through words, but with action. I've shown you the munitions factories, the weapons depots, we hit those and we hit them fast. And we film them, show the people what they are — let them see that the Capitol destroys hospitals and razes districts, but we hit only military targets. Let them make their own conclusions."

She pauses, but President Coin remains as impassive as ever, slush-grey eyes slightly narrowed. "And — I know I said that Two won't turn," Lyme says slowly, "but if they're making this message, then I'm not the only one who has. More people might have turned and others might be questioning. If we make it clear that our tactics are clean, that the civilian deaths are at the Capitol's hands, we might have a chance."

Lyme pushes the tablet away from her, heart hammering in her throat. After several moments' silence, President Coin actually smiles, hard and startling. "I agree," she says. "These precise military strikes are exactly what we need. Better yet, I know exactly who should lead them. Do you?"

She hadn't, not until that very moment, but as the question hits the air Lyme's realization follows. If the rebellion has a hope of keeping their engagements in District 2 clean and free of as much civilian casualty as possible, they need a Two to spearhead the strikes. And perhaps even more importantly, the rebellion will never gain a foothold in the hearts of the people of District 2 unless they see one of their own at the front, running the risks and taking the losses.

Lyme raises her chin just as Nero did and fixes Coin with an unwavering stare. "Yes, Madam President," she says. "I do."


	5. Chapter 5

**NOTE: Thank you everyone for your patience and understanding this weekend as I dealt with a death in the family. Your kind words made a really difficult week a little easier.**

* * *

Brutus stares up at the ceiling, counting his breaths because it feels wrong to run through the deaths list when there are so many more now who never should've made it on. But he's been having a recurring dream ever since he started field training with the rebels, of riding on the inter-district train, and Brutus can already feel it stirring. In the dream he's always at the front of the train, in the engine room, and the driver is gone and the train is hurtling at top speed. It's supposed to be taking him home to District 2 but instead the train is heading off in the opposite direction, far off into the deep wilds of the north. He can't figure out the controls and he can't stop it, and with every mile that passes the sense of dread grows around him as the sky outside turns dark.

Real subtle, you don't need to have a fancy job in head-magic to figure that one out. Subtle, and also real stupid that he wakes up sweating given everything else that's happened to him, but there's brains for you. At least Brutus hasn't regressed to having Arena dreams yet, like he sometimes does when he's stressed and overworked even though it's been over twenty-five years since the first one. He and Enobaria joked about it once, cast bets whether going through it all over again for real meant they'd finally kick the teenage nightmares to the hills or if they'd start having a whole new set.

"Wouldn't it be funny if they mixed, though?" Enobaria had said, staring out at the jungle. "Like, you're your age now and back in your Arena with all those kids in it. And oh, also, now you're not wearing any pants."

Brutus hadn't laughed, and neither had she, and they'd gone back to hunting in silence.

He's finally starting to doze when the door opens, and Brutus sits bolt upright, heart hammering in his chest as he flails for a weapon and comes up empty. "Shit," he mutters, gathering himself under control. Not the Arena. Not under attack. Drag those reflexes back and don't kill the help, son.

Except it's not the help, it's Rigel, his normally tanned face a pale smear in the darkness behind the sharp black outline of riot gear. "Sorry," Rigel says immediately, and turns on the lights. "Sorry, I should've knocked, I wasn't thinking, I just — Enobaria, we know where she is, and if we want to get her we need to move _now_. Are you in?"

Brutus nearly falls out of bed in his eagerness to stand, and he pulls on the uniform Rigel offers him while gesturing for him not to bother leaving. They're all Careers here, and privacy is pretty pointless when just a few short weeks ago Brutus was standing there naked while a team of feathery Capitol interns waxed every inch of his body. They may as well not waste time. "What do we know?"

"We got intel from one of the resistance plants inside Thirteen," Rigel says, bending down to steady Brutus' boot so he doesn't fall on his ass trying to balance. His brain is awake but the rest of him is still thinking about it. "Coin's rebels found the location of the Victors who were in the Arena, and they're making the extraction tonight. They sent their strike team without telling anyone, not even the Mockingjay, and there's a diversion right now to keep the Capitol's eyes off them and everything. Now or never."

Rigel hands him a tactical vest and Brutus pulls it on, idly impressed that they managed to find one that fits him. He hesitates at the various fastenings and makes a helpless gesture, and Rigel steps in to help him with an expression of quiet relief. Brutus wonders whether Rigel expected him to bluster through it and waste time by refusing aid, which, granted, would not be an entirely unreasonable assumption to make given his persona.

"So why are we going?" Brutus asks, wincing as one of the straps pulled tight causes a brief spasm in his chest. "Do the other rebels have a shitty plan?"

"No, it's a good plan," Rigel says, his voice grim. "The problem is, Enobaria's not part of it. Word is that Katniss Everdeen negotiated with Coin for her survival, which was nice of her — and unexpected. Unfortunately for us she didn't think to specify her retrieval, and it looks like Coin is taking that deal to the letter rather than the spirit."

Of fucking course.

Brutus is not a stranger to spin. He's lived his whole life under some sort of propaganda or another — to the point that yes, it's taken him forty years to use the word and almost as long to admit it to himself — and he knows, he's not stupid, he _knows_ that this could be the resistance creating a narrative for their own benefit. They want to paint this President Coin as a tyrant who needs to be stopped just as much as Snow, and so they're going to tell him whatever suits that purpose, but. If a rebel group was going to risk its soldiers to rescue captured Victors, it would not be completely batshit to assume they'd leave the one from District 2 behind.

"It's just the squad," Rigel says as Brutus finishes suiting up. "The timing will be tight, but we can pull this off, and the fewer of us there are, the better. Let them do all the heavy hitting while we focus on the single extraction." He pauses, gives Brutus a long, serious look that makes him seem much older for a moment. "I say this with all due respect, but —"

"You thought you'd have more time to train me, you'd rather not have me with you on this one, but you promised," Brutus says, matter of fact. "I get it, and I appreciate it, and I won't get in your way. Tell me what to do and I'll do it."

Rigel nods, and he claps Brutus on the shoulder. "I promise I'm not going to give you pointless orders for the thrill of bossing around a Victor," he says, flashing Brutus a decidedly unprofessional grin that reminds him — suddenly, painfully, like a hard kick to the chest — of Devon, even though he actually resembles a young Ronan. Then the smile falls and the soldier's mask returns. "Let's get going."

Marius takes the pilot's seat as usual, but this time Selene joins him in the cockpit. Brutus hasn't seen much of Selene, not since the doctors cleared him for more than one visitor and the whole squad came by to visit and introduce themselves. He'd shaken their hands and memorized their names, and only later did he wonder if he should've asked their years.

The boy is professional and courteous enough, but there's something off about him; he carries himself like a soldier but not quite like an ex-Centre kid, and his accent ain't quite right. It's not until one of the others cracks a joke about sand that Brutus gets it, and then everything falls into place. By then he's almost even more impressed. Of all the districts who become Peacekeepers, Fours don't usually cross the lines.

The girl, though, there's something familiar about her, but Brutus can't figure it out. Maybe he met her at some gala or other, maybe her initiation to the Corps was one of the ones he was invited to attend as commencement guest, but she doesn't bring it up and he bets she ain't gonna. The only people who can volunteer that they met a Victor somewhere are the ones old enough that it won't look like political grasping, and that's a long way off for Selene. But she's young, she's quiet, she's polite, and she handles her rifle like Brutus holds a sword and that means Brutus trusts her.

Nobody talks in the hovercraft save to go over mission specs in quiet, businesslike tones. Except the more the silence grows the more Brutus' mind hums, and it's stupid but the thing is — he's fresh out of the Arena all over again, and not the end part when he'd've spent the last ten days on his own fighting the elements and the Gamemakers' inventions, no, but the beginning with a Pack. All the bickering and joking around and fake bonding to pass the time. Things were only silent when shit was really bad.

Dash has a bag of explosives strapped to his hip, and he catches Brutus' gaze and grins a little, shifting the bag a little. "I'm the demolitions guy," he says. Brutus is thrumming with so much energy he could probably power the whole hovercraft himself, but he can't help but break out into a sharp burst of laughter. Of all of them Dash seems the most quiet, the most unassuming, the least likely to be into huge explosions. "I know, but what can I say, I like making things go boom."

"He's good at it," Selene calls over her shoulder without turning around. "And not like me, I'd just blow up everything. Dash uses precision."

"Okay, I like making things go boom _neatly_ ," Dash amends, his grin turning proud and sheepish at the same time. "What can I say. If you need a way in or out without getting yourself buried in rubble in the process, I'm your guy."

"What's your thing, then?" Brutus asks, raising his voice a little so Selene knows he's talking to her.

"Sniper," Selene says, and leaves it at that.

"She's really good," Dash adds. There's admiration in his voice and in his eyes as he glances up at the cockpit, both professional and something else, warmer and… _aha_. Ah, to be young again. Brutus keeps that thought to himself, but it is kinda nice to know that not everything goes by the wayside when the world falls apart. "She can — okay, well, I don't know what the appropriate District 2 metaphor would be, but at home we'd say she can shoot the scales off an anchovy."

"I'm sure that means somethin'," Brutus says, and now it's Dash's turn to laugh.

And it's probably dumb or something but just like that, now Brutus can make it through the rest of the trip without feeling like his brains are gonna eat through his ears. Whether the others got what was going on, or whether the kids are just friendly and filled the silence, it doesn't matter, Brutus is grateful either way. He closes his eyes and lets the weight of the rifle across his lap ground him until Marius calls their arrival.

They don their field protective masks, and after that there's no talking at all.

The ex-Peacekeepers communicate to each other using sharp military gestures and hand-signs, directing Brutus with fingers laid flat against his arm to attract his attention or exaggerated motions when the meaning of a particular signal escapes him. They make their way through empty corridors, long and twisting and absolutely devoid of guards, which sets Brutus' alarm bells ringing. The lights are dim, but there are no scorch marks on the wall, no bullet holes, no sprays of blood, nothing to indicate Coin's rebels were here at all.

Brutus likes this about as well as he'd like walking through a narrow chasm in the Arena without knowing who's waiting on top ready to drop a rock on his head, but there's no point flipping out. Years and years ago the Centre taught them about stress responses, how the body isn't meant to carry that around for too long, and you have to be careful what you let it pickle in. Sure enough, after a while Brutus' eyes start to go, everything seeming vaguely hazy, and at first he thinks he's stressed, or exhausted — or hell, maybe he's just getting old — until he looks down and sees a curl of white smoke around his feet.

In that moment Brutus is back in the jungle with the toxic gas crawling over him, eating at his skin and clawing at his lungs, tearing out wet chunks from inside him and forcing him to cough them out. He almost drops his gun, almost hightails it backwards away from the smoke and starts clawing at his skin to make sure it's not burning — but the others don't notice, they're still moving, and Brutus can do this. He has to. He closes his eyes, forces air back into his lungs, and see it's fine, he's alive, and he has a job to do.

It means the rebels were here and they used smoke grenades to mask their presence, that's all it is. It's a good thing. Brutus swallows copper and idly wonders what happens if you puke while wearing an air filter.

Rigel nearly trips over the body of an unconscious guard when they turn the corner, and they come out into a long corridor lined with cells on both sides. There are more bodies crumpled on the floor further down, and several doors are hanging open. Rigel motions for them to split up and check the unopened cells, and they all branch off and head out.

Brutus gives himself a second, taking a few gulping breaths, almost dizzying within the mask, before moving out. The first room he checks is empty, a white, antiseptic space with nothing but a giant bathtub in the middle of it, strung with various wires and other apparatus hanging above it. The next looks like a parody of a hospital room, medical equipment and a stretcher and all manner of monitors, except that the stretches is splashed with dried blood that no one bothered to clean off.

The room after that —

He doesn't mean to shout, he knows better than that, and thank the mountains and the earth it's Marius who rounds the corner, eyes wide with alarm behind the thick goggle lenses. Brutus must look ridiculous, slammed back against the wall with his legs buckled, gasping like a kid who failed out of Residential because he couldn't kill a kitten, but that's not a kitten lying there on the slab in front of him. It's not even a person, not anymore.

It used to be — and that bit there, and that over there, and those bits, shoved carelessly into a large tub and left to rot in the corner. And now the gorge rises and the pressure hits the underside of Brutus' jaw and he really is going to throw up, and he rips off the mask so he doesn't vomit inside it. Except that's when the smell hits and now there's no stopping him.

When he comes back Marius is crouched beside him, waiting, and Brutus would be ashamed of himself except he can't find anything left within him except a deep, raw horror. Someone did this, people did this, actual _human beings_ took this kid — whoever he is, whatever he did — and chopped him into bits. This boy who looks like he might have only been a few years older than Petra and now he's in _pieces_ and Snow only knows why.

Brutus wants to ask the question yet at the same time he can't bring himself to do it. Marius answers it anyway. "We didn't do anything like that," he says. His voice is muffled by the mask but tight, laced with fury. "We were on interrogation duty. Nobody who cuts somebody into pieces is after information, they do it because they feel like it. But we have to go."

"I know." Brutus pushes himself to his feet, shaky, but then he finds his footing. He spits out one last mouthful of sour bile, drags a hand across the front of his face to wipe away any remaining mess, then pulls the mask back into place.

Three more empty cells, one more body — this one electrocuted, burn marks in the shape of electrodes with jagged dark lightning bolts arcing along her skin toward her heart, but otherwise untouched — and then, finally, Enobaria.

She's tucked away in a back room away from the others, and she would make no end of fun of him if she were conscious but Brutus damn near bursts into tears at the sight of her. Compared to the others she looks like a miracle: all her limbs in place, no burn marks, no cuts or slashes or any other horrifying things Brutus' long-disused imagination had come up with in the last few minutes. All Enobaria has is a few bruises, the showy kind that look worse than they are, which makes Marius and Rigel exchange looks and Brutus wonder if maybe whoever was in charge of her was Two and took it easy on her.

Marius goes to lift her, but Brutus stops him. "I can carry her," he says. Rigel and Marius glance at each other again, and Brutus glares. "Look, you're the better shots, and I know I've been in the hospital and everything but she's half my size. Try to tell me I can't do this and I'll throw you out the window."

They don't have time to argue with him, and everyone knows it. Rigel nods, Marius steps aside, and Brutus bends and gathers Enobaria into his arms. She's always been lean but now she's lost a lot of weight, and it doesn't take much to lift her up and hold her against his chest. She groans a little at the movement, her head tipping back and mouth falling open — and that's when Brutus spots the bloody gaps where the gold-tipped fangs used to be.

"I don't _think_ that was one of ours," Rigel says into the silence. "But at this point I don't think it makes a difference."

Brutus shakes his head, his heart leaden in his chest. "Let's just get out of here."

* * *

Almost there. A few more minutes and Marius will actually be able to breathe again — physically and metaphorically. This has been one hell of an op.

Dash guides them back toward their entry point, leading them through the maze of back passages and side corridors so they don't take a wrong turn and end up waltzing into the guard break room or something. He squints at the readout in his palm, gas mask pushed up onto his forehead, sweaty strands of sandy hair sticking out in all directions. He gestures for them to turn this way or that and only has to double back once.

To be honest, Marius already has the way back memorized and so does Rigel, but it's good to give the kid something to do, to keep his brain from spinning about what they saw back there. Dash had nightmares for weeks after they shot down those runaways from One, and that was distant and clean. Dash will make it through this mission because he has to, because he's a soldier and a Scout and they're here to save Enobaria, but as soon as they're clear Rigel will have to watch him. Dash is the sensitive one, always has been, and there was a kid around his age hacked to pieces and left to rot back there like he was nothing. That would shake anybody.

Selene, of course, didn't flinch, didn't pause, didn't let on there was anything out of the ordinary in any of the rooms at all. She still has her mask on but if she didn't, Marius is sure he'd see her face impassive and professional, not a hint of hesitation in her expression no matter what she's thinking. Her chest plate is still scorched from that homemade bomb weeks back.

Marius is more worried about Selene than Dash. Once they get back he'll talk to her, see if he can get her to tell him anything, but with Selene there's a good bet she'll just turn up the professionalism and try to snow him.

They turn the last corner and run right into a squad of armed Peacekeepers.

Both sides immediately leap back and find cover around their respective corners, and Marius puts Brutus behind him. He's the only one with a hope of blocking the Victor's bulk and protecting Enobaria in the process, and if Brutus doesn't like it then he can yell at Marius over breakfast tomorrow once they're all home safe and sound.

Adrenaline floods Marius in a hard wave, kicking in strong and almost shocking after the slow burn of the mission beforehand. He hears the soft _click_ across the hall as Selene sets her rifle to the sniper configuration, waiting for Rigel to give her the go-ahead to take out the other squad's leader. Dash has one hand on his grenade belt, ready to blow them a new escape route in case they're cut off.

Except nothing happens. Marius' heart pounds, but instead of ordering a volley of gunfire or flash bombs, the squad leader barks, "Hold! Hold your fire!"

 _No_.

Maybe he's wrong. She has her helmet on and it makes her voice sound tinny, it could be the distortion, or perhaps Marius' ears are playing tricks on him after all that time walking through the smoke. Maybe his mind is conjuring up ghosts because he was thinking about the Scouts earlier, maybe seeing the dead bodies spooked him.

"I'm coming out," she calls, and oh fuck this, fuck _everything_ , it isn't Marius' imagination after all. "My squad will hold so I'd appreciate the same."

Selene has her mask off now, the rifle sitting comfortable in position. "Sir," she says, cool and professional and utterly detached.

"Selene, for the love of Snow, don't fire," Rigel says before Marius can panic. Then Rigel swears under his breath and rips off his gas mask, and at this point there's no sense in Marius being the only one so he does too. They're all bare-faced except Brutus when the squad leader walks slowly around the corner, crossing foot over foot in long, deliberate sideways steps until she reaches the middle of the corridor.

She pushes back her visor, and Marius gets a good, long look at the woman he's secretly had feelings for since they were assigned as junior cadets together years ago. An invisible giant punches him in the chest.

"Hello Brin," says Rigel, rising to his feet and meeting her halfway.

"Hello Rigel," says Brin. "What are you doing?"

"We're rescuing our Victor," Rigel says. "What are _you_ doing?"

"My job," Brin shoots back, of course she does. She's younger than Marius by a few years but has already made squad leader because she's brilliant, smart and charismatic and capable of absolutely anything. Once she singlehandedly talked down a crazed gunman with twenty hostages and convinced him to turn himself in using nothing more than persuasion.

She also kissed Marius once, at a bar the night they got their assignments rotating them to different squads, and he could have — he _should_ have — but Marius has never been good at that sort of thing and he'd frozen. He'd waited too long, or made the wrong expression, because after a minute Brin gave him a small smile, patted him on the shoulder and disappeared into the crowd.

She's dating Troy now. He's twice her age, on his second twenty in the Capitol, and they're very happy and that is not relevant to anything except that Marius has frozen all over again because his brain has apparently decided it's just going to give up on working altogether.

"This isn't your job," Rigel says, calm and reassuring but there's an edge to it now beneath the exhausted resignation. "They took her teeth, did you see that? Is that what you signed up for, is that the world you want to build? She's our Victor, Brin. She's _my_ Victor. I'm not going to leave her here."

Brin's face twitches, and behind him Marius hears Brutus' sharp intake of breath. Enobaria is Rigel's Victor more than any other, because it was supposed to be Rigel onstage for the 62nd Hunger Games. He was the top of his class, in line for Volunteer when he took a spear to the leg two weeks before the decision and spent the next two and a half months in recovery. Instead of standing by her side he watched Enobaria's Games from a bed in the recovery ward.

Enobaria is Rigel's Victor the way Petra is connected to Selene, like Annie is to Dash. Marius and Brin, on the other hand, both their years the Victors went home to other districts and their classmates came back in coffins.

"You know you're all reported dead," Brin says finally, her voice tinged with faint exasperation. "Your hovercraft was one of the ones that never reported back after the Arena exploded. We assumed the rebels got you."

Rigel chuckles, as though at a joke that only he understands. "They did. Just not the way you think."

The silence stretches on. Brin finally looks at Marius for the first time, and the eye contact hits him hard and nearly knocks him reeling. He's a soldier, the best of the best, even better because he's better at following orders than giving them, but that means that now he's stuck, breath rasping in his skull.

"Fuck this," Brutus mutters. He strides forward, Enobaria still cradled awkwardly in his arms, and pulls off his mask. It takes a few tries without dropping her, and then he loses his hold on it and it bounces to the ground, but that doesn't take away from the effect. If anything it adds to it, as by now a few of Brin's squad have poked their heads around the corner to see what the noise was all about and are now gawking by the wall.

Brin opens her mouth, closes it, swallows, and wets her lips. "You were dead," she says. It comes out accusing, and despite it all Marius almost laughs. "You were _dead_."

"Yeah," Brutus says. "Your friends saved me. And now I'm asking you to step aside so we can save Enobaria."

"You know, if you'd just left your fucking mask on this would've made my life so much easier," Brin says dryly, and that's so perfectly _Brin_ that this time Marius does actually laugh, even as his chest aches and Brutus rears back in umbrage. "No, I mean — that was great, I'm very moved and yes you win and I'll get out of your way, but there are _cameras_ in this facility, lots of them. Now I have to go make sure that every one of them is wiped so that nobody knows you were here. Bunch of rebels in masks, that's one thing. Capitol-beloved confirmed-dead Victor alive and working for the rebels, not so much."

Marius' brief bout of good humour flees. Being caught on camera letting them go would be one thing — Brin could argue they'd fooled her, told her they were under orders from President Snow to take Enobaria to a safer facility following the rebel attack — but erasing security footage will put Brin solidly into collusion territory, even treason. Letting them go would mean losing her post, maybe a suspension, maybe worse if the president was in a bad mood, but this?

"If you get caught now we're _all_ fucked," Brin snaps. She knows as well as Marius the cost of what she's offering. So must her squad — but no one says a word in protest. "Get out of here!"

"Let's go," Rigel says. "Squad, move out."

And that's that, and it's not any easier but suddenly it's — simple, and that's almost the same. Now Marius is not a man wrestling a decade's worth of emotions and conflicting feelings and a sudden, staggering sense of loss. Now Brin is not the blindingly charming, blisteringly funny woman whom Marius blew his chance with years ago. Now they're soldiers with a mission to complete and that's all that matters. Marius' commanding officer has given him an order, and Brin is staying back to cover their escape and make sure they see it through. That's all it is.

He doesn't look at her on the way past. He can't.

They make it back to the hovercraft, and Marius slips past everyone into the cockpit to take the helm without speaking while Dash and Rigel stay behind to help Brutus with Enobaria. Selene joins him, kicking off her boots and resting her feet against a bare stretch of dashboard, and she turns her head and stares out the window without saying a word. She does reach into her pocket, fish out a ration bar and pass it over to Marius, and when he tries to brush her off she pokes him in the ribs with increasing insistence until he relents. It tastes like cardboard but his stomach growls, so apparently he needed it.

She doesn't try to talk to Marius while they're flying back to Eight, and for that Marius is grateful. Sometimes there's nothing to say.

* * *

Enobaria is still unconscious in the hospital when the call comes that the resistance have found the facility with the remaining missing Victors, but this time Brutus is ready. This time there's no other mission to piggyback, no secret messages from the Mockingjay to hold the Capitol's attention while they sneak in on somebody else's coattails. This time it's all them, and Brutus joins Rigel and his squad as well as a full complement of other grey-uniformed resistance soldiers for their biggest operation yet.

The whole way over, Brutus prepares himself for what he's about to see. The mentors were arrested when the Arena fell, and those back home followed suit not long after, and unlike Peeta Mellark and a few of the others, most of the Victors have not appeared on television for an interview or a propo. Coin's rebels ain't mentioned them either, nothing since the rescue of Annie, Johanna and Peeta that she hailed as a glorious victory. If she's planning another attempt for the rest, she hasn't said so, not to anyone that the second rebellion's spies have managed to overhear.

That's a whole lot of Victors left over who weren't in that first facility, but it seems like both sides are content to forget about them — or at least hope everyone else does. If anything was going to convince Brutus that the group he fell in with is at least better than the others, it's that they, at least, remember, and they're the only ones doing anything about it.

Brutus tries to imagine what it must be like for the others in Thirteen, listening to President Coin say things like _we have rescued the Victors_ as though that's it, full stop. Katniss is young, sure, and the only other Victors she knew are either dead or in the 75th Arena with her, but she's not the only one in Thirteen. Haymitch Abernathy lost most of his friends in that second Arena, but he's been around almost as long as Brutus, and not everyone he chummed around with found themselves on the Reaping stage. Is he too drunk to care? What about Beetee, he still has his mentor and one girl yet living. Does he think they're dead, or did he agree in some backdoor meeting that they're not worth the cost of a second extraction, that the rebellion needs to move on? Or for Finnick Odair, was getting Annie back all that mattered? Does everyone else in the Village who raised him, did their best by him for the last ten years, mean nothing?

That can't be. Brutus won't believe it, he can't. The only answer that makes sense is that Coin lied and told them the other Victors are dead, that the Capitol killed them, and there's no way for any of them to disprove it and no way for them to do anything about it either way.

But Brutus can, and the resistance can, and now they're on their way.

Brutus spends most of the flight there steeling himself for it. This time he knows what to expect going in, this time he won't be blindsided. Of course, that's what he thought about the second Arena and look how that turned out, but there was no helping it then and no point whining about it now. They have their mission, they even have backup this time, and they're not leaving until every single Victor in that facility is out — one way or another.

They planned the op for a shift change, to box in as many of the guards in the break room as they can. Whether this works isn't Brutus' concern; he's on extraction duty, not combat, and once they're in he makes for his assigned corridor and lets the others worry about keeping them clear.

At least there's nobody chopped up into pieces this time. That's about the best Brutus can say for the whole mess, because while they might have started out asking the Victors questions about the Arena breakout, it's clear that hasn't been anybody's priority for a while. The cells all stink of days-old blood and shit and urine, and they have those tubs with the wires and the medical tables laid out with scary-looking equipment and floors with grooves so that the blood can get hosed down easily.

The first Victor Brutus finds is Diana from Eight, and she's a few days dead. She's strapped to her back on a gurney, staring up at the ceiling with wide eyes, and her mouth is a mess of red that's run down from the corners of her mouth and her face a twisted mask but he thinks — as far as he can tell, anyway — that there's defiance there. Her hands are balled into fists and her jaw is clenched and Brutus is no doctor but he's seen Arena suicides and if he had to guess he'd say she bit through her own tongue.

She bit through her tongue and choked on her own blood and they just left her there, turned down the temperature of the room to make it into a makeshift morgue until her skin turned blue and frost rimmed her hair. Still, Brutus gets the strangest feeling that whatever happened, she came out the winner. Whatever they wanted from her, Brutus bets they didn't get it.

(Later it hits him that Cecelia's husband, her three children, are not here. Maybe that's what they were after.)

Brutus swallows hard, calls it in for the body squad, and moves on.

If nothing else, Brutus will hand it to the combat team, because he never sees a single guard. He hears the fighting, distantly, but he and the others on the extraction squad round up the captured Victors without facing any trouble. Most of the Victors are unconscious, though a couple wake up when they're jostled, and not a few mistake Brutus for a hallucination.

"If this is the afterlife, I want my money back," slurs Angus when Brutus hauls him over his shoulder. His eyes are glassy, but he manages to focus after a few tries and jabs one finger in Brutus' cheek. "You ain't half so pretty an angel as my mama taught me to believe."

"You just keep praying then," Brutus says, careful not to jostle him. Angus doesn't look too bad but that doesn't mean anything. Not all torture leaves marks, and indeed, some of the worst kinds don't. "I get prettier when people are nice to me."

But then Angus grips his arm, or at least as much as he can with his fingers spasming like that. (And there, see, that's nerve damage right there or Brutus is an Arena monkey, damn them to hell and back.) "Listen, just in case I'm not dead and this is real, you gotta go back and look for Phillips. They took him away when he wouldn't tell them where his girl is."

Brutus goes cold twice over. "Rokia?" She's a slip of a thing, a mechanic from Six who won the year before Petra. She'd given the Two boy a mercy kill after hours of suffering from a botched attempt by another tribute. Lyme took a shine to her, used to like to keep an eye on her when they were both in the Capitol. "What do you mean, he wouldn't tell them? Where is she?"

Angus blinks slowly, takes a few breaths to steady himself. "She weren't there, when it all came down. Got out right before they picked us up, I guess. Don't know if she was in on it or what but they went right for him, been questioning him the whole time. Convinced he knows something. He wasn't gonna give his girl over, and they weren't gonna let him off easy. I haven't seen him in a few days. He might be dead." He frowns then, gives Brutus an accusing look. "Like how _you're_ dead."

"I got time off for good behaviour," Brutus tells him. They make it back to the hovercraft, and Brutus hands him off to the medical team. "Status?" Brutus asks.

"Three Victors dead so far," says one of the soldiers, brisk. "One from Three," ( _Shit_ , Brutus thinks, _Beetee…_ ) "Four, and of course Eight."

"Not Six?" Brutus asks.

"Not yet," she confirms. "We're still missing both the Victors from Six and Eibhlin from Three, but we're looking. We have a team bringing in the other Fours now."

Brutus nods. "Right. Listen, Angus here says that Rokia — the girl, from Six — she ain't here, says she got out when the Arena exploded. So if we don't find her —"

She nods. "I'll pass that on," she says. She starts to head back, but then she gives Brutus a quick once-over and stops. "We have our teams on this," she says, her voice gentling a little. "You've already done more than enough. If you want to sit this out —"

"I'm _fine_ ," Brutus interrupts, only stopping himself from snapping at the last second. Not her fault, she's military and he's not, and he can feel his one hand trembling even as he presses it flat against his thigh. "I can do one more. Just tell me where we haven't checked yet."

He doesn't find Phillips. Instead he finds Eibhlin, Beetee's girl, curled up on a table in the corner as much as the restraints will allow her. She's naked, skin pale and mottled with bruises and oozing sores, and they've shaved her head and stuck her full of IVs that he's pretty sure are not there to help her with the pain. She's not unconscious but she sure ain't all there, eyes open and glassy and unseeing, voice gurgling in her throat in what might be words.

(At least, he thinks he hears a few, mostly _no_ and _don't_ and _please_ , and oh fuck, fuck, fucking _fuck_.)

Brutus doesn't try to get her attention until he's finished sliding the needles out of her skin and undoing the restraints. This is Beetee's girl, the only one he's got left, and Brutus watched Gloss slit Wiress' throat and he helped him plan the attack that did it, but this is not the Arena anymore and nobody else is going to die. Eibhlin weighs basically nothing, and Brutus wraps her up in his jacket to give her a shred of fucking privacy before he gets her up into his arms.

"This is Brutus, I've got Eibhlin. Coming in now," he says, and waits for the confirmation before heading out.

He makes it nearly all the way back to the hovercraft before she wakes up, but then it's a doozy. She writhes in his grip, twisting and kicking, but with her swaddled in his jacket there's little she can do about it so Brutus has to wrestle a bit but he doesn't actually drop her. She screams but her voice is gone, nothing coming out but a raw, hoarse gasp, and it gets Brutus right in the gut but he can't stop to reassure her. She might be panicked now but it will be much worse if they get caught.

They do make it back, though, and Brutus tries to had her over to the medics except it starts all over again, even worse. This time the screams are staggered, broken by sobs, and she fights her way out of the jacket enough to grip Brutus in the arms. "Please no," she says, begging him, and she thinks he's one of the guards but it's the sight of the _doctors_ that break her. "No, no, not again. Not again, please, I don't know anything else, Please, you can — I'll let you — you can do whatever you want, please, anything, I know lots of things —"

Oh, _fuck_.

Brutus knew, or at least suspected, that Eibhlin had been one of the Victors that the Capitol sold. She must have been terrified at her Reaping, like any untrained fifteen-year-old, but she'd marched onstage and torn the escort a new one for mispronouncing her name. In her victory interview she'd been pale and shaky but defiant, and the commentators made all kinds of ridiculous puns about her red hair and fiery personality.

Then the Victory Tour, and the next time Brutus saw Eibhlin she was a different person, pulled in on herself and quiet, startling away from touch. He knew what that meant. They all did.

To hear her say it, though — to hear her use it as currency with the guards, to get herself out of further torture — Brutus has to stop himself from grabbing a rifle and storming in there to do something stupid and get himself killed.

"That's not happening," Brutus tells her, fighting to keep the anger out of his voice because that sure can't help. "We're not going to hurt you, Eibhlin, nobody's — we're gonna make sure you're okay."

Eibhlin laughs a little, hoarse and ragged. "Not okay. Nothing's okay. Lumina is dead. Wiress is dead. Beetee's probably dead too."

"Beetee's not dead," Brutus says firmly. He really, really hopes nothing changed in the last few days, but it's not likely. All the intel says Beetee has been staying safe in District 13 and not running around on the front lines. "And neither are you."

He brings her through the hovercraft to a small room with an examination table and a small, low tub. Eibhlin screams when he tries to lay her down on the table. She screams again - nearly chokes on it, gibbering and pleading and scrabbling at his arms with nails torn down to the quick - when he lowers her into the shallow bathing basin instead. And that's how Brutus ends up fully clothed and crouched in the tub with her, holding her while the medics sponge off the blood and pus, scrubbing away the caked waste from her thighs. Vomit rises in his throat, but Brutus pushes it back. This is not about him.

Eibhlin struggles at first, but at least it looks like none of them ever managed to turn a sponge bath into torture, and eventually she subsides. Brutus talks to her but she doesn't answer, just lies there with her head against his arm, breathing shallowly. "Hey," Brutus says, thinking back to one of the nights when Beetee actually allowed himself a few drinks. Drinking games from Three apparently involve a lot of math. "Let's play that number game. I'll start. 1, 2, 3, 5 …"

That's all he can do, unfortunately, but Beetee said there are number patterns that any Three can do the same as Twos and the death list, and sure enough Eibhlin picks it right up. "8," she says, twitching. "13, 21, 34, 55 …"

By the time Brutus gets her cleaned off, Eibhlin is rattling off numbers bigger than his brain can even register, and she might still be dead-eyed but at least she's not catatonic. He lifts her out of the tub (he thinks, a hard lump in his throat, of Petra, after her recovery) and dresses her in a set of soft blue pyjamas handed to him by the medics, then he takes her hand and strokes it down the fabric over her arm to let her feel it. "There, see," Brutus reassures her. "Feel that, feel how soft. You're safe now. No such thing as dangerous places with soft clothes."

He hopes that's the only lie he ever has to tell her.

After that the medics take over, and Brutus changes out of his soaked, stained uniform into a fresh set of clothing. He should get back out there, look for Phillips. If this is what they did to Eibhlin because Beetee is unaccounted for, they'll have done the same or worse to Phillips on account of his girl. But just as Brutus is trying to psych himself up to go, a team of rebel soldiers comes back, dragging Phillips between them.

He looks about as well off as Eibhlin, bruised and bloodied and marked all over with spots where the rebels have removed IVs or electrodes, but at least he's wearing actual clothes. His eyes are vacant, and his feet slide on the ground as he tries to walk but can't manage the coordination. Brutus runs over as the medics swarm, and Phillips rolls his head around and stares at him, blinking slowly with wide, drugged pupils.

"I can't believe they're giving me shitty hallucinations," Phillips says, trying to wave everyone off. "Everybody knows you're dead."

"Angus made the same fuckin' joke," Brutus informs him. He goes to punch Phillips in the arm but stops himself just in time. "Did you guys trade notes back there?"

Phillips starts to say something as the medics continue their initial assessment, but instead — in a horrifying, startling break that reminds Brutus of the dam in the 70th — he collapses into tears. "Do you know what those bastards did?" he demands, choking out the words even as the tears drip down his face, tracing the hollows of his gaunt cheeks. "They made me a morphling. Twenty-eight _fucking_ years since I won I never touched the stuff and that's the first thing they did. They've been cycling me in and out of withdrawal ever since."

He cries, and Brutus sits in silence. He's known Phillips since his own victory, and in all those years the man has never touched anything stronger than coffee. Whoever did this had access to his files. Unlike the people who pulled Enobaria's teeth, or chopped that boy's limbs off, or stuck Eibhlin in a bathtub and jolted her full of electricity, this was tactical, and targeted.

This, Brutus thinks — remembering Rigel's detached manner in the hovercraft, Marius' low anger in the first Capitol facility — probably was the Scouts. Personalized, psychological, and ultimately reversible, but absolutely devastating to the target. Nothing wasted here.

One of the medics pauses, holds a hand to Phillips' forehead. "Hey," she says, firm but not sharp. "There's no such thing as an incurable drug addiction, not with the right environment. Not with help. We'll get you right again."

But Phillips keeps crying, exhausted and broken, and after everything he's been through Brutus isn't going to sit and gawk. He picks himself up and heads inside, bypassing the medical corridor to wait for the rest of the combat teams to come back. Occasionally sounds filter through as the rest of the captured Victors start waking, cries and shouts and protests while the medics do their best to reassure them.

Brutus sighs, lets his head fall back against the wall and lets his eyes fall closed. It's been a long fucking day.

* * *

Lyme stands beneath the shadow of the mountains, breathing in the sharp, pine-scented air, and has never felt so humbled.

It's been non-stop since she arrived in District 2, but right now Lyme has a few minutes to herself and she's grateful. She rests one hand against the rough bark of a pine tree, imagines the strength running down the trunk and through her arm, grounding her in the soil until she's rooted in the very bedrock. It's been years since she's been out this far, years since Lyme went anywhere in Two except the Village and the main town at the heart of the district, and every time a Two rebel looks at her with a startled grin Lyme feels an odd, twisting stab of guilt and pride.

These are the people Lyme promised Coin would never turn, the ones who swallow the Capitol's promises like water until they breathe in loyalty with the mountain air. They give their children to the Program willingly, take tesserae to feed their families without a second thought because the slips in the Reaping bowl mean nothing when a bright, strong Volunteer will take the stage. They cheered for Cato and booed Katniss Everdeen; loved him for loving Clove and fighting for his district, hated her for loving Peeta and fighting for her sister, and never saw the hypocrisy.

It's not like Lyme was out of her mind to think they wouldn't turn. Lyme wasn't going to make Coin any promises on the district that created Brutus.

"Nice night," calls a young Two rebel, pressing one hand to his chest on the way past. He says it in a rush, like he had to dare himself to do it, and when Lyme nods at him he nearly trips over his own feet.

"You think you're better than them and it shows," Emory said to Lyme once, when all the Victors since the last Quarter Quell were invited to the opening of a new quarry. Lyme had turned down a brave young man's offer of a dance, clearly egged on by his giggling friends off to the side, and he'd gone on to waltz with a grinning Misha instead. Emory had found Lyme in a corner, taking small sips of her beer and trying not to grimace at the taste. "You think you're smarter than them because you found a way out and they didn't, because you talk proper and they don't, because you're cynical and _mean_ and you think that makes you clever. You think when people don't agree with you it's just because nobody else could possibly have been smart enough to think of your idea first. You look down on hardworking people who make do with a simple life because you think they just don't know any better, and you sneer at loyalty because you can't imagine giving yourself to anything or anyone."

Lyme had stared at her, unable to formulate a response because her brain was too busy trying to remember the last time she'd heard Emory have a bad thing to say about anyone, ever. "They're good people and they don't deserve your disrespect," Emory had said finally, then left without giving Lyme the chance to retort.

That night Lyme had gone home to the Village in a foul mood. She'd woken Nero up at ass o'clock in the morning to spar because otherwise she might have chewed her own arm off, but — while Emory had been right, that didn't make Lyme _wrong_. Two was a district of automatons and perfect soldiers, people who lived their entire lives in poverty, working fifteen-hour days for the lowest of wages while praising the Capitol for every scrap of food. Was it her fault they didn't know any better? Was it her fault that they'd been brainwashed so thoroughly that nothing would ever change their minds?

And then she came here. Lyme can't remember the last time she'd been so completely wrong about something — about _everything_.

They've been making rounds of the outer villages, the poorest mining towns hit hardest by recession as the quarries ran out of stone and no new industries moved in to pick up the slack. Lyme warned the soldiers on the way in, told them to expect a rude welcome at best and an impromptu militia at worst, and had steeled herself for everything that Nero warned in his propo and more.

Instead she found people with lined faces and cinched belts who stiffened at the sight of the weapons and Lyme's face, but broke into relieved smiles as soon as she began to talk. "It means so much to see you out here, Ms. Lyme," says one woman, gripping Lyme's wrist with startlingly strong hands. "I know you keep our children safe, and I don't mean no disrespect to you and your Victors, but it ain't just about the Games, you know. There are no jobs out here, there's nothing for us and nothing for them. The only thing we can do for our babies is to put them in your Program and hope they get a good job in town somewhere and don't look back. That's the best we can ask for, and do you know what that feels like? To hope you never see your children again?"

The woman swipes at her eyes and looks up at Lyme, defiant through the tears. "Out here, we do what we gotta do because it's the only way we know how. Nobody remembers us out here, not the Capitol and certainly not them rebels — least, that's what we thought until you showed up. If you show people there's another way, they will follow."

Lyme has years of media training and experience but she has nothing to say to that. It's too much naked emotion, open and unashamed, all of Brutus' pride and endurance but none of his forced stoicism, and Lyme can't deal with it. She wants to flee from it, from that stare, afraid that this woman can see as much in Lyme as she's showing her — but she pulls herself together.

"Thank you for your words," Lyme says finally. What would Brutus say? Nothing fancy, nothing grandiose. "And for your pain. I will use it, and I won't forget it."

When they leave the village, one or two rebel soldiers stay behind in secret to secure the town, and a handful of townsfolk come with them instead. It's a mix of young and not so young, men and women both, and they don't make speeches or plead their cases but they fall in with stubborn faces and clenched jaws that say there will be arguments if anyone tries to make them go. But the soldiers from Thirteen, whatever they might think of Two, have orders to recruit where possible, and so they accept the newcomers without comment.

So it goes in every village. Each town brings more stories, more proud people who ask for nothing but the chance to fight. Lyme learns more about her district than she ever thought there was to know, and with each meeting Lyme's shame at her ignorance and the limits of her own perception continues to grow. She still feels an outsider, almost alien, like she's a visitor in her own district; they don't feel like her people but strangers who have invited her into their house. At the same time, this is as close as Lyme has ever come to feeling like she might belong here.

In one town Lyme meets a couple who could have been Brutus' parents, tall and strong and quarry-proud, and it's been days since Lyme thought of Brutus in anything but idle memory but now the grief slams right back into her. She gets through the conversation, though, and she deserves a Games-damned medal for it because they actually talk about him: "We gave them everything," says the man, his blue eyes blazing, jaw set at an angle that reminds Lyme so much of Brutus that she can't breathe. "And it wasn't enough. It's never enough. They took our Victors back and killed them. If they're not safe, who is? If the Capitol don't care about them, they sure as shit don't care about the rest of us." Their town is more divided than some of the others, but Lyme still leaves with more people than stay behind.

It's not all hugs and teary eyes and heartwarming stories, of course. Not everyone is comfortable with the rebels leaving soldiers, for one. In some of the areas where the mines are active and profitable they're met with suspicion bordering hostility — and, when they recognize Lyme, disappointment. Nobody calls the Peacekeepers or turns them in, not with their Victor there, but the implication is clear: they can leave undisturbed, but come back here again and no one will make them any promises. It's still better than Lyme expected going in, and regardless of it all, there's not one outer village where at least one stubborn kid doesn't break with the others and follow them on the way out.

They avoid the Academy towns, and the main city with its ex-Career borough, but somewhere along the line the word spreads to the right people. Lyme never finds out who said what or where, but here and there, one or two at a time, Peacekeepers show up. Never in a village, always on the road or at camp in between, but they come. Unlike the villagers these ones are usually older, grey at the temples and all of them with shadows behind their eyes regardless of age. Lyme doesn't ask them for their stories, and they don't tell her, but they bring their own weapons and take to training the new recruits without any urging.

Now, with the recruiting largely behind them, the focus will soon turn to combat. Other teams will handle the precision strikes Lyme recommended while in Thirteen; Coin has already said she wants Lyme at the front, attacking the main facility carved into the mountain at Eagle Pass. The Nut, they call it in Thirteen, a name that Lyme now uses despite its ridiculousness because it's easier that way, for compartmentalizing's sake.

Once the combat starts the real war begins, and the rebellion will stop being an intellectual exercise for these people and start taking real lives. Lyme doesn't want that responsibility on top of everything else, but she can't run from it, can't deny these people the opportunity to fight even if it means most of them might not make it home.

And so instead she leans against the tree and breathes in deep. It feels strange and a little bit like she's pretending, or putting on a costume that doesn't quite fit her, but the mountains and earth were enough for Brutus and maybe Lyme shouldn't be above that sort of thing after all.

Lyme will never be Brutus, and if the people need her to be for this rebellion to succeed, well, they may as well all lie down and wait for the Capitol to fly in on their hovercrafts and bomb them into rubble right now. But if people are looking to Lyme for hope, there's a chance she might be able to do something with that. A chance she might be able to do what she joined this absolute shitstorm of an organization for in the first place.

"Commander?" says one of the rebels, approaching her and stopping at a respectful distance. They gave her the title when she left Thirteen, and it's all for show, so she sounds important and has the proper authority to a people used to hierarchy and rules, but the soldiers at least pretend to take it seriously. "We're due for the transmission from Thirteen in five."

"Coming," Lyme says with a short nod. She takes a deep breath, and she can't salute to the mountains in any seriousness, not without feeling at once ridiculous and a complete fraud, but she does let her gaze linger for a long moment. Then she turns, squares her shoulders, and heads back to the command tent.


	6. Chapter 6

Brutus is there when Enobaria wakes up, frowning at him under the light haze of a mild dose of morphling. She blinks at him, slow and confused, pupils dilated wide, and he watches as she drags her gaze over his face. Then she opens her mouth, but before she can speak Brutus raises a hand and points it straight at her. "If you're going to tell me that seeing me makes this a really shitty afterlife, you should know that makes you the third person to try it," he warns her, putting as much theatrical disgruntlement into his voice as he can to cover the crack of relief.

Enobaria stops, then bursts into a peal of wild laughter, her own voice hoarse and scraping in her throat. "Ha!" she says finally, reaching across to dig her nails into his forearm. Brutus covers her hand with his and squeezes back. "So what, then, did we finally get time off for good behaviour?"

Brutus glances for the doctors, but they left him alone after extracting a promise not to upset her. Like that means anything, when the only people who've ever managed to understand or manage Enobaria are back in the Village and can't help him now. He casts about for a way to explain things, distill the horror of the last few weeks into an explanation that won't leave Enobaria bored or scoffing — she won't care about his late-night midlife crisis, not when she was being tortured and left for dead — but eventually gives up.

"Not so much," Brutus says finally. "Capitol tried to kill me, some Peacekeepers saved me, a group of resistance fighters took us in and now I'm here. We grabbed you and the other Victors in custody, now we're trying to get everyone else out safe."

Enobaria tilts her head, and even with the morphling in her system, even with exhaustion hollowing her eyes and dragging her back against the mattress, there's a sharpness to her expression. She's always been wild, unpredictable, difficult to manage but she's never been _stupid_ , and for a second Brutus sees a hint of what might have drawn Nero to her file all those years ago. "Careful there, Captain Loyal," she sing-songs. Her words come out lisping and mumbled but no less pointed. "That sounds like treason."

Brutus laughs. Even now, after everything, the word drives itself between his ribs and twists. "Oh yeah, I think we're way beyond that."

Her eyelids flutter, but Enobaria claws her way back to alertness for a few more minutes. "I want Nero," she says. Her nails tear crescents in Brutus' arm but he doesn't flinch, even as the blood trickles down the curve of his bicep and drips onto the clean sheets. "I want to save Nero and I want to set the Capitol on fire."

Brutus swallows at the casual savagery. He still can't work his way around that part yet, but Enobaria made the leap as easily as stepping off the platform. "You sure?"

Her eyes narrow to slits. "I know what they did to him," she snarls, and ah. Over years now Nero has been the plaything of aging Capitol socialites, who got their diamond-encrusted claws into him at nineteen and never let go. No Two has ever been sold against their will, but Nero, politely requested by central command to continue his liaisons so Two could benefit from the massive endowments, is the closest they've ever come to crossing that line. "I'm going to find them and break one of their bones for every time they've ever touched him. And _then_ I'll kill the rest."

"I'll let you get some sleep," Brutus says, uneasy. There's a sheen in Enobaria's eyes that he's pretty sure ain't from the drugs, and with so much raw emotion in the air Brutus really needs to — not flee, he just has to do a bunch of pushups, away from here, right now.

He's halfway down the hall when he runs into one of the resistance techs, a young kid named Kyla. She bounces right off him, and launches right into her spiel. "We isolated that comms channel you wanted," she says, waving a readout at him as though that's supposed to mean anything. Brutus had asked if any of their inside people in District 13 could get access to Beetee's private channel so Brutus could send him a message without anyone else listening in. "It's one-way, we can't risk real-time communication when there's no way to guarantee he'll be alone even if we could accurately predict when he'd be in his office, but you can definitely send him a message."

"What kind?" Brutus asks, enjoying her enthusiasm. He might know absolutely nothing about this sort of shit, but watching people be good at things doesn't just extend to swords.

"Video should be fine, provided it's less than three minutes," Kyla says. "Feel free to say whatever you think will convince him, but the less you give that's classified —"

Brutus shakes his head. "No, I got that. Beetee's a smart guy, I shouldn't need to mention you guys at all. He'll figure it out."

Kyla nods, then leads him through to a back room that's an absolute mess of junk, though Brutus will bet she knows exactly where everything is and would take his head off if he moved anything. "Here," she chirps, handing him a small portable video recorder. "Record your message, and don't worry too much if it goes over three minutes, we can edit it down for you. We'll do all the actual transmission work for you."

Brutus salutes and takes the recorder with him. Halfway to his room he stops, changes tacks and heads for Eibhlin's hospital room instead. If he only has one shot at convincing Beetee, there's no sense in wasting any time.

Eibhlin looks much better now that they've cleaned her up and put her in fresh clothes, but she's still lost a lot of weight that she didn't have to lose in the first place. Hearing that Lumina didn't make it out took a lot out of her, and from what Brutus has heard, she's been getting most of her intake from the IVs instead of eating actual food. If he plays it right, this might do some good both ways.

She's awake when Brutus peeks in, staring listlessly at the ceiling, and Brutus bites back a wince. Idleness ain't exactly a characteristic pastime in District 3, and it's probably too much to ask that she's calculating complex formulae or something in her head. "Hey," Brutus calls out, knocking on the door frame. "Can I come in?"

The Eibhlin that Brutus remembers from her Victory Tour would've said something like, _I'm sure you're physically capable of doing so, the question is should I grant you permission_ , but now she doesn't answer. Brutus stays where he is for good measure, trying to figure out how the hell to play this. Once again he opts for diving straight in. "I'm sending a message to Beetee, to let him know you're okay, see if he wants to join us. You wanna help?"

It takes a second but there it is, a low shiver that runs through her as though someone activated a series of switches until Eibhlin pushes herself up to a sitting position. It takes effort, and she's breathing hard by the time she gets there, but she doesn't ask for help and Brutus doesn't want to push it. "Yes," Eibhlin says, but then her hand comes up and touches her head, the pale halo of red bristles that catch the harsh fluorescent lights. "But —"

"I'll see if somebody has a hat," Brutus says.

He comes back later with a soft knit hat — lots of rebels have itchy fingers, and here in Eight it's not hard to find bolts of fabric or spools of yarn or thread — and after a minute of Brutus standing awkwardly in the doorway, Eibhlin steels herself and waves him in. She pulls the hat down low, jamming it down over her ears, while Brutus sets up the camera and comes back to sit next to her.

Three minutes. No pressure.

Brutus balances the recorder on his knees, makes sure he and Eibhlin are both in frame, and hits the button. "Hey, I found someone for you," he says. "Listen, I gotta make this quick, but I'm not dead, Peeta didn't kill me —"

"Peeta?" Eibhlin cuts in, giving Brutus an odd look. "Peeta Mellark?"

"Yeah, that's the official story, right before the forcefield went down."

Eibhlin blinks, her gaze a little uncanny without her characteristic glasses. "That seems physically improbable."

Brutus turns back to the camera with a small grin. "Always knew I liked this one. Now listen —"

"Perhaps if he had time for preparation, and with the appropriate leverage —"

"Three minutes, honey," Brutus reminds her, though not without humour, and Eibhlin pulls herself back to the task. "But look, I'm not dead. I … found … a hovercraft, got out, and later I found Eibhlin and some of the others that the people you're with didn't bother looking for. And — if you want to join us, we can do that. Just find a way out of Thirteen, give us a time and place, and we'll come find you. Then we can figure out how to take down the Capitol and this Coin all at the same time."

He glances at his watch, a cheap thing issued to him by the resistance but useful for helping Brutus maintain a semblance of order in his life. "Why don't you close us out," he tells Eibhlin. "I'll be back in a few."

Brutus wanders the halls for a minute or two, comes back to find Eibhlin lying back down with her face to the wall, curled up on her side with the video recorder on a side table. "We'll make them pay for this," he says, though he knows better than to try to touch her. "And if you're tired and you just wanna rest until Beetee gets here that's fine, but … if you wanna help, if you wanna do something about it, I bet the techs would love your help."

Eibhlin nods, and Brutus doesn't push it, but he makes a note to see if he can't find something to keep her occupied while they wait for Beetee's reply.

And hope, of course, that someone else doesn't intercept it first.

* * *

Not long after Petra speaks to her Peacekeeper escorts about the other Victors in the mansion, an Avox brings a box of Petra's favourite macaroons and a thick white card bearing the presidential seal. Following the same burst of reckless madness that drove her last time, Petra signs "Thank you," to the Avox who delivered the message. The Avox hesitates, then inclines his head in a small nod before hastening out of the room.

"Anything exciting?" Ronan asks from his spot on the sofa across the room. Petra can't help wondering if Ronan is as bored and antsy as she is, without his dogs to keep him company or his chess boards and long nature walks to occupy his time. He hasn't been summoned to any meetings, or been allowed into any political discussions, which seems a waste.

"An invitation to dinner," Petra says, flipping open the card and skimming the contents. "Us and some of the other distinguished guests. President Snow is busy, but he thought it would be nice for us to have an evening together."

Odin manages a smile. "That will be nice," he says. "Not that I tire of your company, but it's been a while since we've seen anyone else." Petra's chest hurts to see him like this. He's trying, but after Brutus — losing his — it's been hard for Odin, and not having anything to keep him busy hasn't been easy. He was always the entertainer in the Village, with the biggest house and the most well-kept garden, hosting the annual barbecue and Harvest Festival gathering and other casual events. Maybe a social evening will help.

In the meantime, Petra opens the box of macaroons and pops one in her mouth, pretending to examine a painting of a waterfall on the far wall while secretly watching Ronan in her peripheral vision. He stiffens as always, nothing theatrical or over the top, but his hand tightens where it rests on his knee and one eye twitches, just a little. One of these days Petra will have to ask him what he has against her favourite treat.

After battling dinner-wear suggestions more appropriate for a full on Capitol gala, Petra bargains her stylist down to a simple suit in champagne silk. She's pretty sure the Peacekeeper escorts who bring them to the banquet hall are the same ones who've been accompanying them throughout their stay, and Petra wants to ask if someone mentioned their conversation to the President but she doesn't dare. She pushed it enough last time as is, asking all those questions.

Petra's mind races, trying to imagine who else might be here with them. It's a little embarrassing but she hasn't exactly kept up with the Victor scene since her win, with all the medical visits and physiotherapy and then her absolutely humiliating shift in the Capitol public eye from brave survivor to poor little girl. Most of her public appearances after that had been inside District 2, Peacekeeper galas and hospital recovery wards and patriot gatherings. The last time Petra saw any of the other Victors, really, had been on her own Tour, and she'd been so high on so many different types of medication to get her through it that she remembers absolutely nothing but a vague, sparkling haze.

With the Quarter Quell looming behind them and so many ( _Brutus_ ) dead, Petra doesn't expect the dinner tonight to be a nonstop mountain of fun, but at least they're all in this together. They're all grieving, all confused and scared and angry, and maybe tonight can be a moment of common ground between them.

Then the grand doors swing open, and the only other dinner guests are the Victors from District 1.

 _Fuck!_ Petra thinks, but she's a fucking Victor and her expression never wavers as an Avox leads her to her seat.

"Finally," says the girl to Petra's right, her cheeks blotched with spots of anger. She's District 1's youngest, who killed Sloane to take the year after Petra in a pitched final battle that commentators called a stunning reverse of the 72nd. Petra has never managed to look her in the eye. "Took you long enough to limp here."

Petra frowns, looking for her mentor to see whether they're going to shut down such a pointlessly needling comment, but no one does. Then a host of servers sweep in from the side and bring in the dishes, and only then does it hit Petra that all the Ones were already seated when she entered but none of the food had been served. But Petra, Odin and Ronan had left as soon as the Peacekeepers arrived to pick them up, and they hadn't taken any detours on the way. Had someone sent for the Ones early, leaving them to sit and wait in an empty dining room for everyone else to show?

It has to be a scheduling error. And anyway, the food is here now, and what's the point of being unpleasant for an entire meal?

Apparently, they're going to do their damnedest to try.

Not everyone. The oldest mentors say very little, choosing to focus on their meals or fend off Odin's attempt at polite conversation, and one of the mentors — Ambrosia's, Petra realizes with a sick jolt, though she can't recall her name in the surge of panic — treats Petra with a sort of patient condescension that might, if she squints, be mistaken for kindness. One of the younger male Victors doesn't say anything at all, only watches her now and then with a quiet intensity that Petra tries not to find unnerving.

But the others —

Ronan tries. He does his best, deflecting as much conversation as he can, but there's only one of him and the Ones have launched a full-scale assault. Petra swallows insults against her looks, her disability, her status as President Snow's favourite pet. It's a constant barrage, ranging from subtle barbs to full on assaults without any pretence at veiling the dagger with silk, and Petra feels her heartbeat kick into overdrive and concentrates on breathing slowly to keep the flow of blood from rushing to her cheeks.

If this were a Capitol party, these sorts of remarks would be made in ignorance. A few hours of gritting her teeth, maybe stabbing her leg with a fork under the table, and Petra would be free to return home and scream, smash some plates against the wall, and no one would be the wiser — and none of them _meant_ anything by it. But here, Petra sees their eyes, the twisted lips just shy of a sneer, and she feels every word like a blow to the gut. This is personal.

The question is — why? Petra's mind slides sideways, a low buzzing blocking out the voices as she retreats, and she tries to come up with something, anything, but she can't even bring up more than one or two names. They all know Petra well enough to sense where to slide the knife, and she —

It hits her then like the awful shudder of Ambrosia's mace against her knee, or the reeling blow of a sword pommel to the side of her head in training. She doesn't know their names.

Petra memorized the stats, of course, she could rattle off their names, their Games years and their weapon of choice, maybe even their Arena environment, but that had all been stats on paper. The wealthier kids had trading cards — Jason, one of the merchant kids who never shut up about how his family had connections to the Centre going way back had a complete set — but Petra never managed to finagle more than a couple, and she hadn't bothered with anyone out of district.

As for the later Victors, in Residential Petra had paid attention while the trainers told them to until their tributes fell, but after that it hardly mattered. Petra could recall the names of every Two who died each year she spent in Residential, but would be hard pressed to name any of the Victors who hadn't been drafted into the Quarter Quell.

The world disappears, or maybe it expands too fast and leaves Petra behind, but suddenly she can't breathe. These are Victors, _Victors_ , people who fought and bled and clawed their way out the same as Petra and even made it out standing at the end, and she hadn't cared because their triumph meant no day off from training, no party with ice cream and outdoor activities and a whole afternoon of free time. And after her own victory she'd never bothered to learn, she'd been so wrapped up in her own pain and self-centred frustrations with not being taken seriously that she'd ignored an entire generation of District 2's closest allies.

Every one of Petra's favourite foods is here at the dinner tonight. How many of the others can say the same? Before now Petra would say that of course she earned it, she paid for her favour with blood just like the rest of them — except it isn't true. The others paid the price with interest, and it started building the day they stepped on the Reaping stage and they'll never, ever catch up.

And she made them wait for dinner and didn't even apologize. No wonder they hate her.

If Brutus were — Brutus would find an excuse to get Petra out of here, minimize the damage and bring her back to her rooms for some sparring to knock her head back into place, but Brutus is — he's not here, and Petra doesn't have that luxury. The sounds of the dinner are still playing faintly in the distance behind the fog of her dissociation, and slowly Petra reaches her hands under the table. Brutus said — she's not supposed to do this, but desperate times, and Petra finds the joint at the base of her pinky finger and snaps it out of place.

The pain shoots down her wrist like a line of fire, and Petra pops her finger back and focuses on the slow spread of the dull ache through her hand. Her breaths come next — four in, hold, four out, hold — until the room sharpens into focus. The youngest girl, hollow-eyed and scenting blood, zeroes in on Petra's return to the conversation as though she'd lit a fire in the middle of a pitch-dark Arena.

"So tell me," the girl says, leaning forward. Petra doesn't know her name but remembers that she gripped Lyme's wrist so hard at the Tour that she left bloody welts etched into her skin. Lyme wouldn't tell anyone what she said. "When the President invites you over for your private teatime or whatever, does he —"

The television at the end of the room flickers on, and Finnick Odair's face fills the screen.

"Son of a bitch," says one of the Ones into the crackling silence as the picture takes a second to resolve. "I thought he would've killed himself by now."

He's in mid-sentence already, and Petra isn't an expert or anything but even with her experience it looks like the broadcast has been running for awhile now. She's pretty sure that whatever's happening, President Snow did not intend for the rebels' latest traitor propo to get beamed into the dining room to ruin their meal, but the hackers must finally have overridden whatever circuits kept this television off the main grid.

"I'll get that," Odin says, in a tone of sheepish chivalry, and he pushes his chair back.

Ronan's eyes narrow. "Wait," he says, holding out a hand, and Odin returns to his seat. Even the Ones have stopped their teasing commentary and have turned their attention to the screen. "He's not reading love poetry this time."

Petra frowns and lets herself focus on Odair's words.

As Brutus would say, it sure is something, and it sure as fuck ain't love poetry.

The buzzing starts up again but Petra fights it back. This is — it's lies, it's slander, it has has to be. It's the rebels forcing him to say this, or Finnick Odair finally cracked after the Arena or something, except — except that's Ronan watching with his mouth pressed thin and his eyes flat, and Odin sitting with his chair pushed away from him and his hands laced together across his ribs, the lines around his eyes deep and craggy. The oldest District 1 Victors aren't even watching, they've leaned back in their seats with their eyes closed, while the youngest stare at their plates, gripping their dinner knives like daggers. The girl breaks the stem of her wine glass and drives it into her thumb — a drop of blood drops onto the white tablecloth and spreads across the smooth fabric like a watercolour painting — until her mentor reaches over and takes it away.

"What do you think," says one of the male Victors, the sharp-faced one who mentored the boy Petra's year. His voice sounds like if laughter could be spun into barbed wire and wound around the entrance to a garden. "After all that, how many of them do you think are _offended_ because they're still convinced it was love? Sick, deluded fucks."

The screen goes black, and the silence that falls fills the room until Petra's ears roar with it. She can't look at them, can't bear to see whatever's in their eyes, because of course she knew, she heard the whispers, she promised to kill Ambrosia and heard her whispered plea against her throat, Petra isn't _stupid_. But it's one thing to hear a rumour in the dark, to kill Ambrosia and save her from a worse fate and consider her duty done and that's the end of it. Once again Petra had never given the situation another thought.

"You know what the worst part is," says the youngest girl, and she doesn't look at Petra but she doesn't have to. The sentence starts as a snarl but then it drops off, like she tried to fling the words but the throw falls short. "You're Snow's favourite. I bet he'd kill anyone who even tried to touch you."

It's a relief when the door opens and the Peacekeepers appear to hustle them back to their rooms. Petra lets the buzzing take over and doesn't bother asking any questions.

* * *

Ronan grips Odin's arm as he prepares to enter their quarters behind Petra. "Odin," Ronan says, his voice quiet steel, and Odin stops. "You need to do right by Petra."

That is the sort of statement Odin would expect from Adessa, and to her he would respond with a cool stare and a polite reminder that their friendship is based on a mutual decision to leave their business to themselves. From Ronan, unfortunately, that is not an option, and with Odin's mind racing with the terrible, sordid secrets that Finnick Odair had so casually flung to the winds as one might pull viscera from a corpse and lay it on the grass in pleasing patterns, he is not of the correct frame of mind to concoct a properly respectful response.

"We have treated Petra as a child these last three years," Ronan continues, without accusation or rancour, but Odin still swallows a flinch. "Brutus was soft on her, and with her injury and after everything that happened none of us saw fit to remove her from her sheltered worldview, I suppose. Perhaps we even liked having one of us stay innocent, I don't know. But the truth is we let it go too far, and now her mentor is dead and she just spent an entire dinner having every negative thought about herself flung back in her face by the most vicious Victors in Panem, and she hasn't let herself feel it because she thinks it's a failure if she lets it touch her. You have to let her break, Odin. You must allow her pain."

"I haven't forbidden her from grief," Odin says, though as soon as the words leave his mouth he knows it is — if not a lie, then certainly not the truth. Since Brutus' death Odin has praised Petra for her strength, her bravery, her ability to persevere in the face of overwhelming odds. As a young Victor Brutus had tried the same, and Odin had been forced to dislocate his shoulder to convince him that vulnerability was no weakness. Yet with Petra he had encouraged her to keep busy rather than wallow in her feelings, use her anger to keep herself clear and focused. He may as well have encouraged her to walk without her cane even as her bones ground themselves to dust.

Ronan says nothing for a good long moment, letting Odin marinate in the stew of his own making. "It's my fault too," he reminds him. Ronan had never asked anything of his children that he would not do himself. "We all made something of a plaything of her. I kept the true cost of victory from her the same as anyone. Now she's seen it, and with the kind of lurid detail that only Odair and his honeyed tongue could ever do justice. Her world has collapsed, and who knows what form her fall will take. She needs her mentor, Odin. What she has is you."

Odin gives himself the time it takes to walk from the front door to Petra's bedroom to chastise himself for failing so utterly. Petra's lack of education on the true horrors of the world are not Odin's fault, true, but everything since the moment Brutus fell has been entirely on his shoulders. Crying about them now, however, will solve nothing, and Odin has allowed himself to be weighed down by grief and guilt and sorrow for far too long. Petra has been struggling, swimming when he should have carried her. It's time for Odin to step in and shoulder her burdens for a time.

He cracks open the door and peers inside. Odin knows not what to expect, but he remembers Petra that first night, pale and hollow-eyed and bowed by grief, her voice shaking until she forced the iron back into her spine. He expects to see something similar now and prepares his speech of reassurance, to remind her that it is not a terrible thing to fall apart.

What he sees is a girl carved from the mountains and lit by the rising sun, sitting ramrod straight with her eyes ablaze, face pale with a single spot of red at the point of each cheekbone. "You've been protecting me," Petra says. She raises her chin and fixes him with a gaze that burns. "I see that now. But Brutus isn't gone, he's _dead_ , I need to say it and I'm not running anymore." Her hands tighten on her knees, knuckles whitening, but she holds it together. "I want the truth. About what Odair said. About everything."

Odin blinks, feeling rather like the floor is filled with patches of soft, slow-sinking quagmires that have shifted to throw off his balance. Ronan is correct — Petra has been strong for far too long, she needs to break — but it will not, apparently, happen this night. Yet in true Petra fashion, he must redirect her lest she run headfirst into the bluffs.

"Dinner was terrible," Odin says, far more bluntly than his character normally allows, and Petra lets out a startled laugh, sharp and caustic like the Arena. "You need to let off some steam. As for questions —" He pauses, lets his gaze flick to each corner of the room without turning. One. Two. Three. Back to Petra. "I have always told you the truth, Petra. We serve the Capitol and in return we are rewarded for that service. I can't comment on anything Odair might have to say in service of the rebellion. I'm not sure what other questions you would ask of me."

Odin prays she understands. Speaking truth, even in private, could get them killed, when in the President's mansion there are eyes and ears in every corner. Loyalty and favour is as much a matter of practicality as it is obedience.

For a moment Petra only frowns, but then her eyes widen and the suspicion disappears as though she flung a bucket of white paint across a graffiti-scrawled wall. "Of course," she says, careful and neutral, a picture of perfect obedience, but then that turns ragged and the desperation seeps through. "I'm sorry, it's been a long day. You're right, let's fight. I really need to hit something."

"I'll do my best," Odin says with exaggerated solemnity, and invites Petra to charge.

* * *

The hovercraft veers hard to the right as a wind shear hits it, throwing Claudius against his restraints and knocking him against the shoulder of the soldier in the seat beside him. "Sorry," he mutters, grabbing the video player from where he managed to catch it with his knees.

She gives him a pretty friendly grin, all things considered. "First time?"

Claudius shakes his head, immediately regretting it when his stomach responds with a lurch that lands somewhere below his chin. "First time was eighteen, flying out to the Arena," he says, and she makes that 'ah' face of genuine I-just-remembered that he can't help but find a little charming. "It didn't move, though. First time I flew out to Thirteen I thought I was gonna hurl all over my shoes."

"I can actually tell you why, if you're interested," says the pilot, tilting his head back without taking his eyes off the cockpit window. "Stabilizers like that suck up a lot of power. You either need to make sure you have a short flight ahead, or you have to sacrifice something else, like the stealth field. Your Arena was probably in one of the badlands close enough to the Capitol that they didn't need to worry about running down the juice."

"Huh," Claudius says. The hovercraft drops again, and he bites off a yelp. "I'll try to appreciate the science when everything I've eaten for the last twelve hours comes back up."

"Try not to think about it," says the soldier helpfully. "It was mashed potatoes at lunch, right? The gluey ones, where you can lift the fork but nothing falls off —"

"I hope this hovercraft crashes and we _all die_ ," Claudius grits out, and they all laugh. The next bout of turbulence knocks the video player to the floor, and the soldier picks it up and hands it to him with only a little bit of a snicker.

Claudius never really thought about it before, but it's a world of difference being with the soldiers who actually spend time outside District 13, doing the actual fighting and spending time with real people in the districts, than the ones who've lived their entire lives in the rabbit warren. No one has called him a murderer or spat in his face the whole ride over.

"What are you watching?" The soldier asks. Claudius thinks her name is Linnea, but it feels a little weird to ask now. "Or well, before it made you motion-sick."

"Here." He hands it over, and this time it's not the wind tossing the hovercraft like a leaf in a storm that makes his insides twist. "It's not authorized yet, so maybe don't talk too loud about it later."

He makes sure the sound is off.

She gives him a slant-eyed look before flipping open the screen. After a minute she nudges the guy on her other side, and they lean in and watch together, heads resting in close to share the screen. Claudius closes his eyes, focuses on counting his breaths and settling his stomach as the soldiers pass around the video player. He doesn't need to see it to follow the action in his mind; Claudius has memorized every cut, every closeup. He'd even cobbled together a rough backing track on his violin, intending to replace it with a real one using Thirteen's synth software when Coin authorized the full propo.

She hadn't. Instead he's here, on the way to District 2 along with the Mockingjay, the full propo team and a handful of soldiers, and every copy of the film Claudius spent fourteen hours a day working on is gone, save the one he smuggled out on the player currently making the rounds.

The player comes back around, and probably-Linnea hands it to Claudius. "Huh," she says. Conversation around the hovercraft has subsided, with most of the soldiers now watching him with thoughtful expressions. "You know it's funny, you Victors and all that, we know that theoretically you can probably fight a little but — it's against teenagers, right, a million years ago. I mean — no offence." Claudius waves a hand. "But she looks …"

"Badass," offers another one. "I'd join up if I saw that."

Claudius laughs, though the sound rings hollow. "That was the idea," he says, and slips the video player into the pocket of his jacket.

Lyme didn't expect much when she left for Two. Claudius saw it in her eyes, the set of her shoulders. After Nero's message she thought they'd spit in her face, and Claudius hadn't expected much better. But the soldiers with her had sent back footage — nothing professionally shot, nobody bothered to send a propo team, so it all came from whatever personal equipment they'd brought with them — and in those grainy, shaky handheld shots Claudius saw something.

He'd seen light in the faces of the people of his district when Lyme walked up to them and shook their hands. He saw Lyme's spine uncurl, as though she'd had weights placed on her shoulders every day in Thirteen and they pulled her down, drew her in, and then for the first time in Two she'd flung them free. He saw the dull, hollow light in her eyes since Brutus died give way to something new: life, and hope, and pride.

When the fighting started, Claudius watched Lyme pick up a rifle and head for the mountain under a spray of heavy artillery fire. The battle was long over by the time Claudius saw the footage, shot on a handheld camera mounted on the helmet of an entrepreneurial soldier, but Claudius couldn't tear himself away, and he'd sat alone in his chair with a congealing cup of coffee by his elbow and wondered if this was how the mentors felt.

If the rest of the district saw this, Claudius thought, they would understand. They had to. And so he'd started collecting every scrap of footage he could, and he cut it and spliced it and made Lyme the centre of the rebellion in District 2. Forget the Mockingjay, forget the faceless soldiers in District 13, forget everyone they've always known to be traitors. This is Lyme. Look at Lyme. _Witness Lyme._ She's not a traitor, she's not a grandstanding politician. _She is you_.

With just the violin to work with the effect had been haunting rather than cinematic. He'd used the voiceovers from the various villagers, at first to protect them from retaliation, but then because it worked better. Lyme hauls an injured soldier over her shoulder and drags him to safety, blood flowing from a cut above her eye, as a woman's voice says _Nobody in charge cares about people like us anymore. Everybody sits up there in their fancy chairs, they don't know what it's like in the dirt. They don't know what it's like to bleed._

For the record, he'd only meant President Snow. Honestly he did. But then again, accidental treason is kind of his thing, so maybe Coin wasn't imagining things when she shuttered Claudius' project and sent him off to Two instead.

Claudius really hopes that's all this is. Coin didn't like that Claudius was taking focus away from the Mockingjay and punished him by killing his pet project and sending him with the propo team to put Katniss back at the centre of the District 2 rebellion effort. He pushes back the crawling feeling that there's something else going on, a spider's web he can't begin to see, and hopes that whatever's in the centre isn't waiting to suck out his guts and rip off his head.

(In the middle of a wind storm is a really great time to remember that nature documentary he watched that one time.)

"Put your head between your knees and think of rocks or something," says probably-Linnea, reaching over to thump him helpfully on the back. "That's probably calming for you, right? Don't you give rocks when you propose? I thought I heard that once."

"Everybody gives rocks when they're engaged, what do you think gemstones are," Claudius snipes. They all laugh, and he lets the nausea chase away the last of his worries for now. Literally trying not to vomit helps.

* * *

They take losses, just as Lyme thought, but not as many as she thought, so that's — something. The only strategy that Coin will approve is direct ground assault, and Lyme is too polite to say it during their terse video exchanges but — has the woman ever _seen_ a mountain? (It's the most Brutus thought Lyme has ever had, and at the time she's so exasperated, so filled to bursting with frustration that for once there's no room for grief.) Does Madame President understand how mountains work? The only thing saving Lyme and her team from being completely mowed down the moment they charge is that it's actually really fucking difficult to hit tiny moving targets with stationary heavy artillery from that far away.

The military geniuses who designed the stronghold didn't need to install anything more precise like automatic long-range weapons with auto-tracking or lines of anti-infantry defences. The mountain does it for them. Lyme spends a lot of time writing — and then discarding — increasingly agitated memos to Thirteen about the inanity of their orders, at least until she finds out one of the aides has been fishing the crumpled missives out of the trash and passing them around for laughs.

"Hey now," Lyme says, snatching back her latest masterpiece. "Don't make fun of the boss."

"Nobody's making fun," Malcolm says, all big-eyed innocence, which might be more convincing if he weren't twice even Lyme's size with a beard that looks like it could swallow a small child. "It's just, you're all polite when you talk over the vids, then you write stuff like this. Nobody would ever guess."

"Yes, well." Lyme gestures vaguely. "You know what they say. Put your Victor face on, kids, camera's watching."

She has no idea if any of it makes a difference, or what they're even fighting for. For all Lyme knows they'll exhaust themselves against the mountain until there's no one left to fight, and the Capitol will laugh and lose nothing more than sleep and a little bit of artillery. Then again, that's not what this war is about, it's not what it's ever been about. It's not just about winning. Sometimes the most important part of a fight is deciding to stand up in the first place. If Coin needs someone to fight a symbolic war with little hope of strategic success until her military advisors finally convince her it's pointless, Lyme's willing to be that person. At least she can keep the casualties as low as possible.

Here's hoping that whatever footage makes it out inspires the people in a scrappy underdog keeps on kicking sort of way, not a demoralizing, don't they know it's hopeless sense. But as strange and sacrilegious as it feels in those moments when Lyme catches herself dropping her shoulders and releasing a long breath, for the first time since Brutus died — and truth be told, long before that — it feels like things might actually be changing for the better.

The rebel towns in Two are holding. No one has changed their minds and given them up to the Peacekeepers in the meantime, and they've had a steady trickle of new recruits ever since Lyme first made the rounds. And while it might not mean a lot in the grand scheme of the war, the news of the captured Victors being rescued means that Enobaria and the fifteen or however many other prisoners are finally free. It also means Coin gave enough of a shit to save them. That thought alone carries Lyme through a hard battle and a long night on a quarry doctor's table, half conscious and bleeding while the young doctor saves what would have been the loss of her arm.

She's in the middle of trying to draft a new approach up the mountain when someone knocks at her door. "Just a second," Lyme says, distracted. The Mockingjay and her crew have arrived, throwing everything into a frenzy, and Lyme really wants to finish what she's doing before having to deal with any of that. "If you have something for me you can leave it on the desk there."

"I can stop by for my hug later if you want," says a very familiar voice, and Lyme whirls around to see Claudius grinning at her from the doorway. "Hey, boss."

Lyme drops her charts and catches Claudius in a fierce embrace, pulling him to her with such force that he squawks and mimes having his spine broken but doesn't actually try to squirm free. "Good to see you," Lyme says, even as the words feel ridiculous. She grips the back of his neck, feels the bristle of his still-short hair against her fingertips, finds the thunder of his pulse as it hammers against her thumb. _Alive, alive, alive_. The fight continues and they're still here. It's the small victories that keep us alive from sunrise to sunset.

Claudius laughs into her parka. "You too," he says, reaching up to pat her on the shoulder with exaggerated care. "You've been busy."

"Yeah, yeah." Lyme pulls back with reluctance, sliding one hand across his head in a move that's half cuff, half caress. Claudius ducks out of the way, still grinning. "I didn't think you'd be coming. I thought you were my insurance policy." The whole reason why Claudius had stayed behind in Thirteen in the first place was so that Coin had assurances Lyme wouldn't take any misgivings and run now that she was back in her home district.

A shadow falls across Claudius' expression. "Listen, about that," he says slowly, then glances over his shoulder and shuts the door behind him. "I think — something's happening. Something big. And I think … part of it might be my fault."

When he finishes, Lyme lets out a low whistle. "Kid, I leave you alone for _how long_ —"

Claudius bristles. "Hey!"

Lyme sighs, slings her arm around his shoulders even as Claudius glares. "I don't mean that, I just mean _be careful_ , it's like you have a knack for knowing exactly what will get you killed and sticking your head right in it. And who knows, D, maybe it's a coincidence. She rescued the Victors, that has to mean something."

"Yeah, all three of them," Claudius snorts, and the shock hits Lyme hard like the frozen lake in her swim test. He looks at her, all ruffled indignation gone. "Wait, did you think — no, boss, that whole big 'rescue the Victors' mission, they came back with three. Johanna Mason, Annie Cresta and Peeta Mellark. That's it. Coin's acting like their job is done."

Lyme swallows down a wash of rage, white-hot and incandescent, that spreads through her like wildfire. She must not have done a very good job, because Claudius gets one look at her face and takes her hand, letting her squeeze his fingers tight. Enobaria is still missing, as well as all the other mentors from the Quarter Quell and every other living Victor not from District 1 or 2 — with the districts on fire and executions on television every time Lyme turns on the TV, the Capitol is looking for anyone they can use as scapegoats of the rebellion. How could Coin say the search is over?

"Okay," Lyme says, forcing herself back under control. One foot forward. Find your weapon. Nobody ever kills all twenty-three tributes at once. "So we keep our eyes open. We'll find out what the game is eventually."

Two weeks later, rebel command arrives to discuss one final, decisive stroke to bring District 2 to its knees.

Lyme uses every ounce of image training and every agonizing hour spent in the sponsor den to keep herself from leaping across the room and throttling everyone. She tries, but it's no good. The war council agrees that the best course of action is to bomb the facility of Eagle Pass and kill everyone inside. Not just the staff but the miners trapped under the mountain, a factor that's negligible in the grand scheme of things because, of course, as Gale Hawthorne points out — because apparently they let eighteen-year-olds make important military decisions nowadays — there are no civilians in war. Certainly not in District 2. Lyme made that point herself, it would be hypocritical of her to argue against it now.

And now it all makes sense.

Why Lyme has spent these weeks in futile attacks against the mountain. Why she and her soldiers have thrown themselves against the stone again and again, gaining nothing while every alternative plan gets cooly and politely overturned in favour of dogged persistence. It wasn't pointless at all; it was politics. Every line Coin fed Lyme and her team — patience, ruthless perseverance, the importance of not letting the people or the Capitol see her giving up — all of it had been leading up to this moment. _You see_ , said everything Lyme and her soldiers fought and bled for these past few weeks, _nothing has been achieved here, and nothing will be gained by incremental change. Something drastic must be done._

Lyme tries her best, but she's been outplayed. Despite all her years in the mentor ring, crafting Arena strategies and working to manipulate the sponsors, Alma Coin is a spider and Lyme is no match for her. She's angry and defensive from the start — of her soldiers, of their efforts, of her district and its people — and having to listen to an angry teenager who thinks his own blinkered, suicidal fury makes him qualified to dictate policies of mass destruction makes Lyme wish she could drag him by the collar from the room until the grownups are done speaking.

Katniss Everdeen, of all people, speaks up against the plan, as does Beetee. Lyme's too furious, too shocked and disbelieving that they're even having this conversation to acknowledge their support, but she does notice, and she does remember. When this is all over, if they all survive. she'll have to thank them for trying. It won't matter to the thousands of people who will die in the explosion or choking to death on the smoke or suffocate alone in the dark, but in war, every moment of humanity — everyone who fights for a little less soulless slaughter — should count for something.

Coin allows for two considerations: a night strike, for fewer casualties, and an open tunnel to allow some of the miners to escape the death trap, and Lyme could fight like a bird trapped against a closed window until she's nothing but blood and feathers against the glass in the end but there's nothing more she can do. "Fine," she says, and feels the last filament of her soul snap. She gave her word to her people, she promised them safety and protection under the rebellion, and now look at what that word is worth.

They won't forgive her. Not for this, and Lyme can't ask them to.

"One thing, Madame President," Lyme says. She can't look at young Hawthorne, won't remind herself he's little more than a child and deserves her pity and understanding, not her fury, not this time. Not when he stares at her in challenge and triumph and practically dares her to fight him. "I request that I be allowed to enter the tunnels and personally assist in the rescue efforts."

She steels herself for a refusal, has already prepared her counterarguments, but instead Coin smiles. "Of course," she says, magnanimous. "I completely understand. Of _course_ you'll want to help your people. You can take Claudius with you, if you like. You have my full authorization."

"I — thank you, Madam President," Lyme says, very aware of a growing sense of unease, as though she'd nearly stepped backwards into a yawning chasm and only caught her balance in time. "If you don't need me, I think I'll take my leave."

Claudius finds her not long after, sitting with her head in her hands. "Hey," he says, calmer and much less murderous than Lyme expected. She must really look like shit. He sits next to her, rests one hand between her shoulders. "I heard."

"You were right," Lyme says. "About everything. It was a setup, all of it. All of this, me being sent here, you being pulled off your propo, everything. Two never meant _shit_ to the rebellion, and I played right into it. Now it's going to be so much worse, because we gained their trust and this is how we're repaying it."

"We'll save as many as we can," Claudius reminds her. "They won't know or care about the rest of it, the politics and all that shit. They will know it was you in the dark pulling as many people out of the rubble as you could. To the ones you help, that's what'll matter."

A memory sparks in the back of Lyme's mind a moment before the longing hits, hard and heavy all at once. It's all Lyme can do to stop herself from crying, and she swipes a hand across her eyes and leans back, tipping her head up to stare at the ceiling. "Nero told me a story once, back when I was first out, when I didn't understand how mentoring one kid every few years and _maybe_ saving one or two could make up for what I'd done and all those deaths besides."

She misses Nero, his warm, solid presence, the way he could set the world right and make everything make sense with only a few well-chosen words. Claudius says nothing, waiting, and Lyme sighs. "He told me about a boy walking along a beach, tossing starfish who'd washed up onto the shore back into the water. Some asshole tried to make the kid feel stupid, asking him why he bothered when there were thousands of starfish dying every day that he'd never find."

Claudius thinks about it for a minute, then lets out a soft, surprised chuckle. "I think I know the punchline."

Lyme leans over and wraps her arms around him, resting her head against his shoulder. "You're a smart kid, that's all I'm saying."

Claudius tips his head against hers, their breaths synchronized. "If you left now, you know I'd come with you."

"I know."

"But you're not going to leave."

Lyme sighs. "No. I could order you to, though."

This time he snorts. "Boss. C'mon. You could try."

"Worth a shot." She drums her fingers against his arm, and Claudius lets her take her time, gather her thoughts. He really is a good kid. He doesn't deserve what she's put him through. "But — listen. If … after this, when it's over, if we make it out of here, I think I'm done. This rebellion, it's not what I signed up for, and it sure isn't why I dragged you out here. If we survive, I say we grab our things and we don't come back."

Claudius goes still, thoughtful. "And then what? Head for the hills and find that old hunting cabin Brutus used to take his kids to, become mountain people? Wait for everyone to kill each other while we live off the land?"

Lyme lets herself enjoy the absurdity of that image for a minute, but even that ridiculous fantasy sours if she can't picture Nero and Misha with her, like trying to take in all the details of a photograph that's being set on fire from all corners. She betrayed the people closest to her, and that still needs to matter. "That's not really what I meant," she says. "How about a trip to the Capitol, just you and me, see if we can't get ourselves an invitation to Snow's mansion?"

Claudius exhales through his teeth in a long, slow hiss. "Yeah," he says. "Sounds good to me. Been a long time coming."

That is not the kind of mission that anybody walks away from. Claudius is a smart kid, he has to know that as well as Lyme does. But after what's coming next — so much death, all those broken promises — that's no longer Lyme's concern. After a certain point, the question isn't how to avoid the end, it's where and how to make the final stand. No Two has ever sat by and waited for the final cannon.

"Yeah," she says. "It really has."

* * *

Brutus cops a glare from the doctor as he passes by on the way to Enobaria's room. "What did I do?" Brutus asks, more amused than anything. He's been doing all his recommended exercises and hasn't tried pushing his limits or anything. His lungs barely even burn anymore.

"It's not you, it's all of you," the doctor says, poking Brutus in the chest with his clipboard. "I caught Enobaria trying to fashion a pull-up bar from the bed rails. When I went to stop her she actually _bit_ me. I'm finding myself having to be grateful for a gross violation of human decency that I still have use of all my fingers."

Brutus covers his laugh with a cough that, for someone with as many years of image training and practice in the sponsor den and in front of cameras as he does, is really a piss-poor job. The daggers the doctor skewers him with say the man is well aware. "Sorry about that," Brutus says. He doesn't promise to talk to her because that's worth about as much as trying to bathe all of Callista's cats at the same time one-handed. "Thank you for your service."

"Next time I'm going to forego my oath and let you kill yourselves," the doctor warns, and stalks away muttering to himself under his breath.

Enobaria is back in bed by the time Brutus reaches her. "It barely counts as biting if you don't have fangs," she says, to forestall the lecture that Brutus will never be able to convince her he wasn't going to give her in the first place. Her voice lisps on the s-sounds when her tongue hits the gaps, and Enobaria hisses and gnashes her empty gums, reaching for knives and slapping her hands against her sides. "Remember I made people bleed?" Enobaria says in a tone of wistful savagery.

"You hated the fangs." Brutus folds himself into the chair beside her bed. Not just the fangs themselves, how she had to eat a liquid diet or spend half the day picking strings of food from her teeth, how she woke up every morning with a mouthful of blood, but how they meant the Capitol marked her, owned her in a way she could never forget. She used to chew on things absent-mindedly when her teeth got sore; half of Devon's shirts had teeth-marks in the shoulder from when they'd curl up and watch terrible Capitol TV together.

"Good for getting my way, though," Enobaria reminds him. "Hey, you know that girl who pulled you out?"

Brutus frowns. "Selene?"

Enobaria nods. Brutus wonders whether Enobaria honestly didn't know her name or just didn't want to pronounce the initial S, but after stumbling through a few attempts at getting around the sentence without any offending sounds, Enobaria gives up and powers through. "I was her first."

"Really? Huh." Brutus never really thought about it, but yeah, she would be around that age. After a while they all start to look like babies. "Are you proud? You've traumatized a whole new generation."

"Oh, no, no trauma." Enobaria smiles, and somehow it's worse now that she's started keeping her lips together to hide the lack of fangs. "Bit her childhood buddy. Made him bleed."

" _Seriously_?" Brutus racks his brain, trying to connect this information with the professional soldier he's seen on the field, but on base Selene mostly gives him professional nods and avoids his company otherwise. Nothing in their interaction has struck him as the type who'd have a childhood Enobaria obsession and a history of biting friends in an attempt to emulate her Victor-crush. Then again, keeping quiet and avoiding small talk would be exactly how to avoid that tricky scenario. "Did she tell you this?"

Enobaria shakes her head, her eyes alight with remembered satisfaction. "Just the first part. Her partner said the biting part. Then she punched him really hard."

Brutus grins, but before he can ask her if Dash let anything else drop, Rigel and Marius show up at the door. "We got a response from Beetee," Rigel says. "At least — we think it's Beetee. It's text only, could be a trap, but we had Eibhlin look at it and she identified several markers that she said made it clear to her that it's genuine."

Brutus glances at Enobaria, who shrugs. "And?"

"He's not leaving," Marius says. "He says he needs to stay, make sure there's someone in Coin's inner circle who knows what's going on, and who can try to talk her down from some of her more extreme ideas. And while he believes Coin is dangerous, he can't risk endangering the mission to take out President Snow."

Enobaria snorts. "So, nothing."

"Not nothing," Rigel corrects her mildly. "There is a lot Coin has planned that has nothing to do with the core mission. Things to do with her own personal agenda or vendettas. He's willing to give us intel to that end. And as a show of good faith —" Here Rigel's demeanour changes, sharpens. He squares his shoulders, and a flicker of angers crosses his face. "You saved his Victor, so Beetee says he'll return the favour. Coin is going to bomb the Victors' Village tomorrow night, while the rest of their forces orchestrate an attack on the fortress at Eagle Pass."

Enobaria has always been a fire and explosions Victor. Brutus has never seen her react with ice, no matter how many times Adessa tried to convince her that steel and frost could be so much more terrifying than bluster. Now she goes very still and very quiet, nothing moving except the rise of her chest and the flare of her nostrils, all energy concentrated into the emaciated whipcord of her body. For the first time since her victory, after years of being startled, alarmed and exasperated, Brutus looks at Enobaria and feels _afraid_.

"I'll kill her," Enobaria says, calm and unconcerned with Brutus' reaction, reminding him of sharpening a weapon without looking up. "Snow first. Then this asshole."

Rigel meets her eye and doesn't flinch, and once again Brutus remembers that Rigel and Enobaria fought together, trained together for eleven years. He wonders what else Rigel has seen in her that Brutus never will. "Don't worry," he says. "But listen, that's not all. Beetee did some digging and that's not the only thing Coin has planned that night. There's also a kill order out for Lyme. She and Claudius are going into the tunnel rescue the miners trapped by the explosion. Coin has ordered a team to make sure they don't come out."

"Oh fuck _that_ ," Enobaria snorts, the aura of chilling composure shattered as she moves to bare her fangs and catches herself at the last minute. "The only one who can make Lyme miserable is me."

" _Fuck_ that!" Brutus echoes. He doesn't realize he's leapt to his feet until he registers everyone else's surprise, finds himself standing with his fists clenched, teeth grinding tight enough to send pain lancing through his jaw. "Fuck _all_ of that. Tell me we have a plan to stop it."

"Calm down, grandpa," Enobaria says, patting the blankets in a mock-conciliatory fashion. "Don't give yourself another heart attack."

Brutus glares at her. "My heart stopped for less than a minute," he reminds her. "And don't 'grandpa' me, at least I have _all my fuckin' teeth._ "

The moment of genuine shock is worth it before Enobaria starts laughing, though not long after that Rigel clears his throat. "If you're done…" he says with remarkable patience and fortitude. "We don't have a lot of time."


	7. Chapter 7

The crickets are silent when Devon takes a late-night run through the Village, winding between the trees and doing his best to avoid catching his foot on stray roots and falling on his face like an idiot. Any other year the lack of singing insects would mean nothing but a change in the weather, a turn in the air marking the coming of fall. This year, though, there haven't been any crickets in weeks. Not since the constant rumble of gunfire and artillery from the mountain started filling the evenings, a steady lullaby that's become as familiar as the scent of pine or the low, eerie call of the mourning doves in the eaves above his window.

No gunfire tonight, funny enough, and the lack of distant thunder from the mountain feels strange, almost like a roar in Devon's ears. It's the silence that drove him out of the house to run for a second time that evening, or maybe he's making up for the first few weeks since Brutus' death when he did nothing but curl up in his mentor's sweaters and marinate in grief. There's been a buzz under his skin this last little while, driving him to _move_ — to run, to train, to swing swords and polearms until his sweat pools on the floor and his muscles turn to trembling fibres — and with the Village bathed in sudden quiet, Devon couldn't stay inside.

He passes by Misha's house on the way in, sees the living room light on and nothing else. Devon stops, chewing on his lower lip, and he rocks back and forth on his heels for a while, weighing the odds. The only reason for Misha's living room light to be on is if she's watching TV, except that all the entertainment channels shut down after the Quell. And Misha isn't the type to get invested in the news or the propos or any of the Capitol twenty-four-hour "everything is fine don't look at the giant bonfire" info bulletins, which means there's only one thing she could possibly be watching.

The question is, does he really want to get involved in this again.

Devon could go home. The path is right there, splitting off right in front of him. He could turn the other way, head back to his house, pour himself a tall glass of water and do a round of weights or sword forms to tire himself out before collapsing into bed. Or he could call Callista, she's not — well, _nurturing_ is definitely not the right word, but she likes Misha, and Misha responds well to her, and at the very least she could probably snap Misha out of it, at least for a little while. He'd call Emory except she would totally come over without a second thought and that's why Devon won't, not when she's been working herself to the bone trying to keep all three of them okay and not ever giving herself time to fall apart.

He's so tired. Brutus is dead, and the Capitol is losing its grip on the country piece by piece but not before taking hundreds of innocent people down with them. The whole Village has been in a kind of stasis, everyone tense and snappish, waiting as the band stretches farther and farther before it snaps. Nobody knows what's going on, what any of this means, and after Nero made that propo there's been no contact from the Capitol or President Snow at all. But he's not the only one who's hurting, and Brutus always said the only way to get through feeling helpless and sad is to find one tiny thing you can do and do it, start to finish.

Her light's still on. Devon sighs, scrubs a hand through his hair to flick away some of the sweat, and jogs over to Misha's house. He pushes open the front door without bothering to knock, and he doesn't turn the lights on but he does kick off his shoes and pad into the living room. Sure enough, the sounds of the television filter through, lots of static and staccato gunfire and shouting, with one familiar voice barking out commands underneath it all.

He can't see her, which means Misha's not on the couch but curled up in Lyme's armchair. Meanwhile onscreen is shaky hand-cam footage of Lyme dressed in military fatigues, a splash of blood across her forehead, dirt and rock dust ground into her skin, an assault rifle slung over one shoulder as she grabs the arm of a dazed-looking soldier and hauls her to her feet. It's been a while since the rebels have put out any propos with Lyme — two weeks or so, by Devon's count — which means this is one of the ones Misha managed to record.

"Fuck off, Devon," Misha says when Devon rounds the corner of the kitchen, before he even comes into view. He's not sure whether she's guessing or if she's clocked the way he sounds by his gait. Either way there's no point pretending he's anyone else. "I'm not in the mood."

What she thinks he came here to say, Devon has no idea, especially when he's not even sure what he planned to say himself. "Have you eaten?" he asks instead. When in doubt, be Emory.

Misha's huff of breath carries over the rattle of televised gunfire. "What part of 'I'm not in the mood' don't you understand?"

"I'm sorry," Devon says immediately, careful to keep it mild. Blurting out apologies too quickly only ever makes Misha derisive. Misha doesn't respond but the silence bristles between them, and right there he decides to change tacks. "I'm not here to lecture you. I just didn't want you to be alone, that's all."

She doesn't tell him to fuck off again, so Devon takes a step forward, then another, until he makes it to the side of the armchair. Misha's balled up into the corner just like he thought, and when Devon eases himself down onto the arm of the chair she stiffens for a minute before finally uncurling a little and scooting sideways. It takes a little bit of manoeuvring, but Lyme's chair was meant to be big enough for full-grown Misha to climb into her lap when she felt like it, and eventually they manage to find a way to wrap around each other without anyone falling off. Devon tucks Misha's head under his chin, and she doesn't hug him but she lets him hold her and shifts so that her elbow doesn't jam him in the ribs.

"I hate that I miss her," Misha says after a while, when they reach the end of the taped footage and the screen dissolves into static. "I never used to miss people. I could just —" she makes a cutting motion with two fingers, bringing them together with a sharp snap. "She left me, and she's not even, I don't know, dropping bombs on the president's mansion or anything, she's fucking — she's in Two, she's _right here_ , leading attacks on our own people. Why can't I let it go?"

Devon has known Misha long enough that he doesn't try to answer for her, even if it sounds like she's asking. Instead he kisses the top of her head, then sits back and tips her head up. "Come for a walk with me?" he says. "Look, it's nice weather, and they're not charging the mountain for once so it's actually quiet. I'm not saying it'll fix anything, but it might be good to get out and clear your head a little."

"Ugh," Misha says, headbutting him in the shoulder. "I see what you're doing, trying to indoctrinate me into your club of better living through physical activity, but okay fine. But only because you're cute."

"That's how I get my way all the time," Devon says. He slides out of the chair and extends his hand, tugging her to her feet, and together they head out into the peaceful, moonlit night.

Or at least, it's quiet until they're halfway down the path to the clearing at the centre of the Village and a sudden windstorm kicks up, ripping at the leaves and bending the trees. "The hell?" Misha bursts out. "I thought you said the weather was — oh _shit_!"

Devon's too busy covering his eyes against the flying twigs and dirt to notice whatever has Misha gripping his arm. "What?" he shouts over the roar. "What is it?"

"Look at the grass!" Misha yells, and when Devon goggles at her she lets out a half-muttered curse and yanks his head down. And yeah, that's grass all right, flattened almost completely to the ground in a wide circle by the excessive wind.

Wait.

 _Flattened_?

"Oh _shit_ ," Devon echoes, scrambling back and half dragging Misha with him until they're back behind the cover of the trees.

"Yeah, now you get it," Misha says, bracing herself against the nearest trunk.

Now that he knows to look for it he hears the whine of the hovercraft engines beneath the gale. Devon's heart hammers hard in his chest, and he looks at Misha, eyes wide. "What do we do? Do we run?"

"And do what?" Misha counters grimly. "Get our swords? Warn the others when we don't even know what's going on? Let's wait a minute, see if we can figure out what we're up against."

A sudden awful, twisting thought hits Devon: no gunfire in the mountains. The rebels aren't attacking the stronghold tonight. What if, instead — but no, no, Lyme would never let that happen, whatever reason drove her to turn and leave her girl behind. Whatever this is, Devon won't let himself think that, not until it's too late. Not with Misha right there next to him, wide-eyed and breathing hard.

A hovercraft shudders into view as the stealth field drops, and the sudden silence as the engines cut out and the wind dies down is worse than the lack of rumbling weapons fire in the mountains. Devon's ears pop at the sudden pressure, and he holds his breath as an opening appears in the hull and the landing ramp lowers to the ground. Beside him Misha's fingers twitch, and he knows she'll be wishing she had stashed a knife or two in her pyjamas before heading out for her evening stroll.

Then footfalls, boots on metal, and a figure emerges, ghostly in the dim glow of the track lighting along both edges of the ramp. And now Devon can't breathe, and Misha's fingers grip his arm, and there's a roaring in his ears and a ringing somewhere in his head and now he's running, jerking free from Misha's hold on him — ignoring Misha's _wait Devon what if it's a trap_ — and tearing across the grass, barrelling straight into the one person he hoped but never thought he'd see again.

"Stop squashing me," Enobaria says, even as she yanks him in close and digs her fingers into the scar on his shoulder from the last time she marked him with her teeth. "They're coming to kill you. We have to find Nero, get everyone out of here, and _then_ you can tell me how much you missed me."

Devon pulls back and gapes at her, but then a cadre of Peacekeepers in battered armour come down the ramp behind her along with a handful of men and women in grey uniforms. The leader steps forward, a handsome man with dark curly hair who looks like a young version of Ronan, and Devon's memory pings. Even as his brain struggles to keep up with what Enobaria said he's already running a search in the background, trying to find a name to go with the face.

"She's right," the man says. Misha comes up behind Devon, guarded and suspicious but listening, and she reaches over to clasp Enobaria's wrist. "Coin's rebels are sending a squad to bomb the Village. We don't have a lot of time. If you can help us convince the others to evacuate, it will go much easier —"

"You're Rigel," Devon bursts out. "You were Enobaria's year. I invited you to sleep with me at the annual Peacekeeper Gala and you turned me down."

"Oh I remember that now," Enobaria says. "You were disappointed, I had to find someone extra cute to cheer you up and it took all night." She turns and gives Rigel, now turning a prodigious shade of red, a sharp-eyed glance. One of the grey-uniforms lets out a hysterical, half-swallowed laugh, while the two younger Peacekeepers exchange delighted grins. "Maybe you're not as smart as you look. Should we really be trusting you to run this operation?"

"It's okay, E," Devon says. Holy Snow on a fucking slag heap, what a time for him to lose control of his mouth. Get it together, Devon! "It's not — he's just not into guys, that's — I — anyway, it's not — yes, evacuation, let's do that. E, if you get Nero then he can get Adessa and Callista, and with them on board we can work backwards from there. Misha and I will start with Emory. Does that sound good?"

"Let us know as soon as you've woken everyone," says Rigel's second, mercifully taking over. "I don't think we should be entering anyone's houses before they know what's up, but we don't have a lot of time."

Devon nods, then flees, and tries to ignore Misha's choked and half-whispered laughter as she follows.

* * *

Nero is cleaning Enobaria's house when all hell breaks loose in the centre of the Village.

It's a habit he picked up from Lyme, funny enough. Nero always knew how to take care of himself and his house, Adessa made sure that he had the proper table manners and all the right skills, including cooking and keeping his house presentable just in case someone comes over when he's not expecting them. But it's Lyme who used to clean when stressed, a holdover — he finally pried out of her once, her face buried against his leg, words muffled and mostly unintelligible — from the days when her mother would drag her into a bout of frenzied cleaning before her asshole dad got back from work.

Nobody makes her do it now, of course, but when the stress built up too much and she felt like she was going to boil over, some days swords and sparring didn't cut it. Some days Nero came over and found Lyme with the fridge door open and all the food stacked around the cupboards, scrubbing grimly at the baseboards. Whenever it happened Nero would sit down with her, pick up a cloth and start cleaning right along side her. Somewhere over the years he'd started to do it himself whenever he really, really wanted to destroy something instead.

Convenient, now, that he has so many empty houses to clean while everyone's away.

Nobody asked Nero to take care of Ronan's, or Odin's, or Petra's, but he does anyway, because why not. It doesn't take much to dust them, and once a week or so Nero does a full scrub down of the floors and crannies just to be safe. He does Enobaria's, too, not because she hates messes or because she'd notice if there was dust on the tops of the cabinets but because it helps, pretending that he's tidying up a little bit before she comes home.

He hasn't done Lyme's. He tried, at first, but everything felt too real, too raw, and her presence hovered too close around every corner. And then the President's propo team had come with their cameras and their script and the threat of Enobaria still missing hanging over his head, and he's gone on to say those awful, unforgivable things on camera and — well. He couldn't really make himself go back in after that. They'd both betrayed each other now, and keeping her house free of dust and mildew wasn't really gonna cut it this time.

When the commotion happens, Nero is wiping down the windows in Enobaria's living room. The sound is halfway across the Village but Nero knows a hovercraft when he hears one, and what the _fuck_? Even the Capitol doesn't come in here without permission, Two loyalty has to buy a few extra privileges, after all. Whoever this is, whatever reason they bypassed all the security to land in the middle of the Village halfway to midnight, it can't be good.

Whoever they are, they're also really, really stupid. It doesn't take Nero more than a few minutes to run back to his house, open the weapons cabinet and grab a machete. Anyone fool enough to bring a hovercraft into the Victors' Village is likely smart enough to have guns, but Nero is pretty sure that at his size he can take a few bullets unless they get real lucky with the first shot. Long enough to bring a few of them with him, anyway.

He runs into Enobaria instead. She's wearing someone else's clothes, grey uniform coveralls that hang loose on her frame, hair braided close to her scalp and pulled back at the nape of her neck. Her collarbones jut out at sharp angles, and the shadow of exhaustion haunts her face, but then her lips twitch in a smile and all that tension inside Nero shatters, like a drinking glass teetering on the edge of the counter and finally tipping over the side.

"If I knew you were coming I'd've made you a smoothie," Nero says. He tries to be normal, casual, not scare her off, really he does, but then Enobaria laughs, raw and ragged and sharp as razor wire and hope, and screw that. He leaps forward, catches her in a fierce embrace and presses their foreheads together, cradles her face in his broad hands and breathes it in.

"You probably thought I was dead," Enobaria says, eyes darting sideways. "I'll let it slide just this once."

The words bubble up inside him, following a wave of emotions that threaten to drag him under. Nero has always had too many feelings, even if he learned to control them and mask them and present a blank, expressionless face to the world, but he can't let them take him away now. Too many questions, and it's too soon. He can see it in the way Enobaria can't quite look at him, in the hunch of her shoulders and the sting of her nails as they dig into the skin of his wrists. Whatever happened, she's not ready.

He chucks her under the chin instead, like she's fresh out and fiesty, and Enobaria rears back and bares her teeth at him. And that's — _oh_ , those aren't hers, it's a perfect white set that sits oddly in her mouth, and whether they're a implants or a false set, Nero knows she never would have done this herself. Especially when a second later Enobaria remembers and snaps her mouth shut, hurt pulling tight around her eyes.

"I like what you've done with them," Nero says, keeping his voice light. "Very asymmetrical."

"Felt like trying something new," Enobaria says, even as her voice goes ugly.

It's been a long time since Nero has felt a stab of fury this deep. He's not like his girls, he never wanted to kill, never wanted to hurt people, not even when they did their best to train him into it, but right now — right now Nero wants to find the people who hurt his girl and pound their skulls in with his bare fists.

He closes his eyes, lets the cadence of their breaths sync together. Enobaria's nails dig into his wrists again, tearing lines of blood along his forearms, and Nero welcomes the sting because it means she's home, she's here.

"Ugh, okay," Enobaria says finally. She lets go and steps back, digging the heel of her hand against her eye. "We have to hurry if we're going to get everyone out of here _and_ save Lyme."

Nero freezes. "What?" he says, feeling his heart slowing in his chest, like even beating too fast will cue the universe in to what's happening and scare it off.

Enobaria grins. "That's twice I got to surprise you today, I could get used to this. Let's hurry up and then we can explain everything when everyone's all there to hear it."

A strange new feeling wells up inside him, clear and singing like the sunrise on a crisp spring morning, and only when it hits him full in the chest, warm and glowing and chasing away the shadows that have gripped him ever since they called Enobaria's name on Reaping Day, does Nero recognize it as hope.

* * *

Everything blurs after that. Half the older Victors were asleep already, or at least they were before the ruckus, and it takes a little while to get everyone gathered in the clearing. It's the first time they've all been together since the Reaping — nobody's bothered with the monthly community meetings since Ronan left for the Capitol — and now they all stand confused and blinking in their nighttime comfort clothes. Except for Adessa, who apparently sleeps in a wrinkle-free silk pantsuit, and Callista, in a dramatic, floor-length dressing gown that makes not a few of the rebels raise their eyebrows.

Nero has his arms around Enobaria, holding her in close against his side with the kind of protective anger that makes Devon feel sorry for anyone who tries to step between them. He shoots a hard look at Adessa, who nods sharply and steps forward. "Speak quickly," she says, choosing the nearest rebel and addressing him. He flinches as though scolded by his grandmother. "Well? You brought my grand-Victor back to us; that gives you my attention. I suggest you don't waste it."

After a few minutes of terse explanations, everyone falls silent. Devon glances at Misha, whose throat works in a hard swallow. Lyme threw in her lot with the rebels, betrayed her district in the hopes that they would fix everything, and look at what they're doing; murdering a whole district of Victors while they're sleeping in their beds. Though that's not how they'll phrase it, of course. Devon can see it now, the history books putting it down to a regrettable act of war, neutralizing enemy collaborators and traitors to the people. It makes sense. Tie up loose ends, get rid of the Victors who've made their loyalties clear.

Although, that might be better than surviving only to be made an example of. Devon would rather die in his sleep than be forced through a public torture and recanting session to satisfy the bloodlust of every person in the district who's watched him or one of his tributes bleed their children dry.

"Listen, there are no conditions here," Rigel says, stepping forward, earnest and charismatic but not begging. He's authority appealing to authority, and Devon watches Adessa recognize it, sees her tilt her head and study him with renewed interest. "No strings, no allegiance. If you want to go back to the Capitol after this, someone will take you there. But right now, if you stay, you're going to die. That's guaranteed. We need to move everyone out and we need to be gone before the hovercrafts show up. I understand this is a lot to take in, but my job is to make sure you all get out of here safely, and I'm going to do it.

"Well, all right, then," says Callista, tossing her head. "But I'm not leaving without my cats. I'll need at least five of you to come with me."

One of the rebels looks to Devon, probably singling him out as a friendly face, or maybe as the sane one, who can tell. "Is she serious?"

"Oh yeah," says Misha, with the first sign of real humour that Devon's seen from her in weeks, at least. "I'll come help, but let's hurry. They don't like having their routines disrupted."

All things considered, it doesn't take that long for everyone to get packed and ready. They're Victors, and Victors are survivors, and the situation might be weird and confusing as hell but they know how to roll with it and they're not going to get left behind by their own confusion. The only real problem is trying to figure out what to bring. Devon shoves a few changes of clothes into his bag, but — he's never done this before. Everywhere he goes, his entire life, everything has always been provided on the other end. When he left for the Program he took pictures of his family with him and a few knickknacks from his childhood, but he didn't need to worry about anything else because the Centre provided all his needs. When he stays in the Capitol he doesn't bring anything at all because his apartment and the Games Complex are fully stocked and waiting for him whenever he arrives.

Nobody ever tells Victors how to pack a bag when they're fleeing from an execution and might never see home again. Devon never considered himself particularly attached to _stuff_ until he's standing in his room and feels a gut-clenching panic at the thought of leaving all this behind. What about his weapons, what about the sweaters Enobaria knitted for him, or the dozens of pillows and profanity-laden cross-stitch from Misha that lie scattered all over his house? It's the last fifteen years of his life here but so much more, and every little thing in here is a memento, memory and connection and friendship on every surface.

In the end Devon shoves his bag with clothes, an extra pair of shoes, and nothing else, though he does shove a shortsword in his belt because — well, it feels weird to leave unarmed. But if he starts trying to choose what little, sentimental thing to bring with him then he'll be here forever. Better to leave it all behind than get paralyzed with indecision. On the way he stops at Misha's and does the same for her, fills her satchel with clothes and a few of her favourite knives. He doesn't try to figure out what in Misha's extensive and frenetic pile of disorganized paraphernalia would be the actual important thing she'd want to take with her. He's not even sure if she knows.

He makes it back in time to go help Callista and the others wrangle the last of the cats. Nero had the bright idea of swaddling them all in his t-shirts, which sends half of them to spitting uselessly while the rest of them give in and settle down to sleep. Everyone else is packed and ready, Adessa having changed into normal clothes and carrying a handsome leather briefcase in addition to her away bag.

"Never you mind," Adessa says crisply when Devon gives the briefcase a curious glance. "We all have our plans."

"Those are her knives," Misha says, coming up behind Devon and speaking in a low, conspiratorial tone. "She has them all arranged in there like one of those clown cars, you know, that can fit like twenty people? She's probably got the entire Centre's worth in there. I don't want to know what she's planning on doing with them."

There's not much time to talk. Everyone hustles onboard as they wait for the final group of rebels to return, and the hovercraft isn't a one-man vehicle or anything but it's definitely cramped with all of them plus the cats, who immediately start yowling and fighting their blanket burritos to find laps to drape themselves over. Devon squeezes in next to Misha, near the exit because she hates feeling penned in anywhere, and it's weird but he still hasn't really processed it all when Enobaria flops down next to him.

"Hey," she says, and there's anger in her words as usual but it's bright and rippling like sunshine on the surface of the lake, not the dark, ugly, festering kind that used to fill her until she had to find some creature in the woods to stab. "I have another surprise for you."

Devon curls one arm around her, and Enobaria nuzzles his shoulder with her cheek like a pleased cat. She hasn't tried to bite him once, and there's something off about that, about her smile, but Devon hasn't been able to pinpoint it. "Yeah?" he says. "Because seeing you is pretty good, I don't know if I need another one."

Enobaria laughs. "Trust me," she says. "You're going to like this one. But I won't tell you, I want it to be a surprise."

Finally the last of the rebels squeeze inside. "Okay, heat spoofs are in place," the woman says, tossing an empty satchel onto the floor. The pilot runs through the last of the preflight checks before spooling up the engines. "Coin's hovercrafts all have infrared, and if we'd taken everyone without leaving some kind of diversion she'd know you were gone," the rebel explains. "It's important that nobody in Thirteen knows you were tipped off or it will give up our source."

"Beetee," Adessa says, speaking up suddenly.

"Yeah," says the rebel, giving her a startled look. "How did you know?" Adessa doesn't reply, only smiles a little in quiet satisfaction, and the rebel continues. "We didn't have time to go through and lace the entire village, so we set up a bunch of fake heat signatures in the community hall. Anyone who flies over the village and scans it looking to make sure you're there will see you all in the community hall and assume you're there watching the broadcast."

Nero frowns. "What broadcast?"

The hovercraft clears the trees just in time for everyone to get a good, clear look as the mountain explodes.

* * *

The last miner scrambles to his feet, dirt covering his clothes. Blood smears his forehead, his fingers as he grabs Lyme's hand in both of his. His palm skids against hers. "Thank you," he rasps out, through a throat coated in fine layers of rock dust. "Thank you."

"Go," Lyme tells him. Across the narrow tunnel, Claudius digs through chunks of fallen rock, holding a lantern to check for any more survivors beneath the rubble. The light bounces wildly from the swinging lamp, sending sharp shadows skittering across the walls. Deep rumbles echo throughout the cave. "When you get to the end, don't fight, no matter who's waiting. Listen to the Mockingjay."

The man gives her a startled look, but it turns thoughtful soon enough. Lyme is a traitor to her people, a Victor and a mentor who left it all behind to fight against their own, but — she saw the videos her soldiers took, before Coin ordered them destroyed. She wonders, looking into the man's face, if he saw them too.

"Listen," Lyme repeats, insistent. "Enough people have died already. Now go!"

He disappears into the dark, footfalls echoing against the stone. Lyme runs a hand over her face, feeling grit and sweat and the slide of blood under her fingers. A lot of dead, this far in, but a lot of living, too, and far more than there would've been if they had to wait for a proper search and rescue team to pull everyone out in the coming days.

They'll be pulling far more bodies out of the Nut itself. Lyme wonders for a moment whether they'll start rescue operations right away or wait a few days for any survivors to bleed out or asphyxiate or die of dehydration in the dark. Her stomach tightens, and Lyme swallows a wash of sour bile and forces the thoughts back. One starfish at a time.

"I think that's the last of them," Claudius says. He presses both hands to the small of his back and leans, wincing as his spine cracks into place. "Can we get out of here?"

"Soon," Lyme says. "One more sweep of this tunnel and then we should get out of here. I don't like how it's sounding up there, I think the whole thing might come down on top of us if we stay too much longer."

"You don't need to tell me twice." Claudius takes a second to steady himself, swaying a little on his feet as a wave of exhaustion hits, but he flashes Lyme a grin and a thumbs up when she moves to help him. "Good to go, boss."

The single unblocked tunnel stretches up through the mountain until it opens out in the main square. The square will be the worst kind of chaos, Peacekeepers and rebels and civilians all fighting for control, and Lyme can only hope that it's over quick. That whatever speech Katniss Everdeen manages to pull out of nowhere at the last minute works to inspire at least some of them over to her side. Lyme managed to avoid the worst of the fighting on the way in by heading straight for the tunnels, but she can't avoid it forever —

Claudius gives her a searching look, and he doesn't have to say anything aloud for Lyme to know what he's asking. She promised to get him out of here — again — to escape the tunnel and the battle and Coin and District 13 and all its lies and manipulation. Promised to, somehow, get them all the way across the open land to the Capitol, without resources, without food or weapons or supplies, nothing but their clothes and their wits and a lot of determination to get them there.

The safe bet, the reasonable one, is to stay here. Choke down her anger and resentment and do her best to fight from the inside, no matter what Coin has in store for Two. They have no plan, no no allies, no assets. It would be suicide to leave now. They wouldn't starve, not with twenty years of Arena training between them, but Peacekeepers patrol the district boundary and search every train coming in, they'd never find a way in.

She asked Claudius to follow her into uncertainty once, and look where it got them. Better to stay where they are, with the enemy they know, and wait for a chance to strike. It's the sensible move. Lyme didn't win the Hunger Games by dashing off the platforms and straight into the minefield.

A large tremor shakes the cave, knocking Lyme sideways and sending a rain of rocks skittering to the tunnel floor. Claudius curses and nearly drops the lantern, hopping on one foot before catching his balance.

"Let's get the fuck out of here," Lyme says. "We'll find a way to the Capitol somehow."

Claudius grins at her, teeth white in his dirt-streaked face. "Sounds good to me," he says. "And you know, after all that time stuck underground, a little old-fashioned wilderness trekking sounds like a great vacation to me. Plus we get to go on a murder spree at the end of it? Sign me up."

This is most definitely the stupidest, most reckless thing Lyme has ever done, but even in the depths of the tunnel, the air pressing in close around her to the point it's almost choking, she can't help but feel as though she'd stepped out of her old skin and found it weighed half a ton. Claudius all but skips beside her, and he kicks a hunk of stone ahead of them into Lyme's path for her to return, and they play stone-hockey as they make their way up the tunnel.

"Is it weird that I didn't actually think we'd get to do this?" Claudius says after a minute. "I mean — okay, it sounds stupid, or paranoid, but part of me thought maybe she was just going to have us killed down here. That's what I'd do if I were her, no witnesses, no cleanup. just say we got trapped underground and —" He gestures vaguely. "Like I said, paranoid."

"No negative self-talk," Lyme says, punching him in the arm as though they're at home in the Village with absolutely no looming death whatsoever. "And anyway it's not stupid, I kept thinking the same —"

Footsteps.

Lyme stops, grips Claudius' arm to keep him still, even holds her breath so that it doesn't rasp inside her skull, but no, that's definitely footfalls echoing off the tunnel walls, too heavy to be anything but boots and too purposeful to be civilian. Her blood freezes and a distant roaring starts in the back of her mind.

"Holy shit," Claudius whispers, fisting one hand in her sleeve. "I jinxed it."

She actually cuffs him on the back of the head without thinking, and the reflex gesture both makes Claudius let out a startled laugh and snaps them both out of the frozen fear. "Pickaxe," Lyme says, pointing. Claudius darts over and wrenches an axe with a broken shaft from the rubble, grimacing at the awkward heft.

There's nothing else in the tunnel here for Lyme to use, except that isn't true, is there. Nero won his entire Games without a single weapon, and just her luck, the tunnel is full of Nero's signature killing tool. Lyme picks up two fist-sized rocks and holds one in each hand. The added weight should let her bash in a few skulls, or at least smash a couple of jaws. Lyme never learned how to ride a bicycle, but she sure knows how to kill by hand.

"Is this the part where I say 'it's been an honour'?" Claudius asks, kicking the lantern away into the corner so at least they'll be able to see. He steps in close, presses their shoulders together. "I bet I can take down more than you can before they get me."

"In your dreams," Lyme snaps, fighting down a hysterical burst of wild, half-crazed laughter at the same time. This shouldn't happen, she should send him back through the tunnels somehow, keep him safe while she fights them off on her own, except that will never work. They'll kill her, track him down and kill him too, and if she can't save him then at least Lyme can make sure that Claudius doesn't have to die alone.

"I'm sorry," Lyme says. It ruins the nice warrior banter they had going, but she can't let their last words be bullshit, either. "For everything. I never should have brought you here."

"Are you kidding?" Claudius turns to her, his face a grinning death's head mask in the eerie half-light. "I'm exactly where I want to be."

And then there's no more time, because the first figure appears in the shadows of the tunnel. "I forgot how mushy you two are when nobody's looking," Brutus drawls. "It's a good thing Enobaria went with the other squad or she probably woulda puked just now."

Lyme drops the rock on her foot.

"So there's gas in this mine," Claudius says. He's still gripping the axe, feet braced to take his weight. "That's my take on this. There's gas in the mine and we're asphyxiating and hallucinating before we die."

"Everyone makes the same damn joke," Brutus laments, and he has the absolute asshole audacity to grin behind the definitely not Capitol-approved beard. "Don't die, kid, that'd be awful rude after we went to all this trouble to get you out."

Lyme still can't make herself form words. Brutus is here, he's alive, he's —

( _Brutus hits the ground in a torrent of spasms, blood pouring from his eyes and nose. He clenches his fist against his chest, eyes fixed at the camera as he chokes on the foam that bubbles from his mouth. Lyme's mentor console shrieks a dozen warnings as his organs fail, as sponsor gifts — antidotes, adrenaline shots, even a rebreather mask — flash across her screen before disappearing as they become irrelevant. Brutus coughs up a mouthful of blood, then collapses back against the jungle floor as the cannon fires and all Lyme's life signs monitors cut out at once._ )

"Lyme?" Brutus says, a little uncertain now, eyebrows furrowing as he looks back at her. Judging by the way Lyme's eyes are stinging, she thinks she has a pretty good idea of what's freaking him out. "You gonna unfreeze any time soon, cause we kinda gotta keep —"

Lyme breaks free of her stupor and launches herself across the tunnel at Brutus, punching him right in the face. Pain explodes across her knuckles as she makes contact with his jaw, and Brutus reels back with a muttered invective but soon enough he's grinning. "You _fucker_ ," Lyme spits out. She meant to shout it but the words come out hoarse and rasping, and she grabs him again and pulls him in for a hug that's less an embrace than it is clinging to a lifeline. "All this time I thought — you _asshole._ "

"I know." Brutus actually hugs her back, solid and steady and _real_. "I know, I wish I could've found a way to tell you, I felt like shit every time I saw you on TV. But look, we can talk all about it soon, all right? But first we need to get you out of here." He pulls back, fixes her with a serious expression, the one she sees every year they sit down to plan a mentoring strategy together. "The kid's right. They are coming to kill you."

"Have I ever mentioned how much I hate it when I'm right?" Claudius interjects. "You have another way out then? Because they blocked all the tunnels except one."

"Yeah, we blasted in through a side tunnel just off this one," Brutus says. "I've got some charges with me, we can blow the whole thing behind us and make it look like you two were caught in a cave-in. You good to go?"

It all makes sense, except that Lyme saw Peeta Mellark get up on television and tell all of Panem that he killed Brutus — and knew with all her years of training and experience that he believed it. That right there is proof that the Capitol can manipulate people's minds, trick them into acting and speaking for someone else. This could be the body of Brutus standing in front of her, but with his mind scooped out and put back out of order.

There's only one way Lyme can think of to make sure. "Yeah, just one thing first," Lyme says, and she grabs Brutus by the shirt and kisses him full on the mouth.

The Capitol loves the idea of her and Brutus together, always has. They've denied the rumours over the years, of course, but always in a way that leaves things open to keep the sponsors gossiping. A Brutus who's not himself, who's trying to inhabit someone else's life based on the context given, might take Lyme's cue and run with it.

Brutus recoils, eyes bugging out. "What the _fuck_?" he bursts out, stumbling back and nearly turning his ankle on a loose chunk of stone. "The fucking — okay, look, I know you've had a hard day, and maybe that rockslide addled your brains or something, but —"

Relief hits Lyme like a gunshot and knocks a laugh right out of her, wild and frenzied. Brutus and Claudius both goggle at her like she grew another head, and Lyme laughs harder and swipes at her eyes. "It is you," she says, and the last of the worry and paranoia releases, leaving her oddly free and floating. "It really is you."

Brutus slaps a hand to his forehead. "Next time ask my favourite colour," he gripes, heading out into the tunnel.

"It's blue, because you're a giant walking cliche," Lyme shoots back. She finds the retort without thinking, like picking up a sword tailor-made for her and feeling it sing as she swings her arm. "Anyone could guess that."

He actually has two favourite shades of blue, one the bright blue of cornflowers bobbing in a meadow in the summer sun, and one that rich, shifting blue-green over the mountains just after the sun has set when the skies are clear. But saying any of that is too much — the fact she even thought of it at all shows how close she is to her breaking point — and so Lyme keeps it to herself.

They're just reaching the side corridor when the echo of distant footsteps sounds far-off down the main tunnel. There's no mistaking the military tread, and this time Lyme hears the vibrations of several pairs of boots, not just one. "Shit," Brutus mutters. "Okay, help me get these charges set. We thought about doing it ahead of time, but if something went wrong and they got detonated too early we'd be shit out of luck."

Claudius snuffs the light, and the three of them work fast in the pitch darkness as the pounding footfalls draw nearer, eerie as the sound bounces off the walls. Brutus didn't say how much training he has working with the charges — or who his friends are, for that matter — but there's no time to worry about that. He directs them with quick, whispered commands and taps on the arm, and Lyme's heart hammers in her chest as the countdown timer in her head ticks closer to zero.

At last Brutus clasps her arm, then taps two fingers twice against her bicep. _Let's go_. Lyme finds Claudius and tugs him back, and they ease back away from the line of charges toward the exit just as Coin's men round the far corner in a phalanx, a circle of light from a single lantern bobbing in front of them.

In the centre of the formation stands Alma Coin herself. The rage hits Lyme like an icepick to the skull and digs deep, and for a second she can't breathe, can't think of anything at all but the anger boiling up inside her. Brutus has a gun, she could grab it before he figures out what's going on, and it's dark and Lyme is no marksman but she's been practicing enough for one shot against a slowly moving target in a confined space, she should be able —

"Let me kill her," Claudius hisses. "Please, boss, let me kill her."

Funny how it works, being a mentor. As soon as Claudius says it, the bubble of rage building up inside Lyme's chest pops, leaving her empty of everything but a cold, hard clarity. "No," she says. "The rebellion would collapse, and the Capitol would win. We'll kill her later. For now let's go."

She does take one last look, fixes the sight of Coin's stern features, the waterfall of steel-grey hair and cold eyes glittering in the orange glow of the lantern, her military posture and the cruel twist of her mouth. _One day_ , Lyme vows. _One day the country will know what you are._ Then she ducks back through the side tunnel, gives Brutus the signal, and covers her head as he hits the detonator.

For the first moment it's the loudest thing Lyme has ever heard — louder than the mines exploding in her Arena, dulled by memory and the intervening years, louder still than the bombing of the mountain from the ground — and then, there's nothing but the ringing in her ears. She opens her eyes but it's too dark to see anything but blurs, she shouts but nothing registers. Only the ringing and the pain, or maybe the pain is a sound itself — Lyme touches her ears and feels a warm trickle — but then a hand on her arm pulls her to her feet and she scrambles against the loose stone and dirt, catches her footing and runs.

Light shines through a hole in the tunnel ceiling, catches on a dangling rope. Lyme sends Claudius up first, waits beneath him while he scrambles up the rope as though he's twelve years old and it's a Centre exercise. A hand reaches up from above and pulls him over the edge, and Lyme pushes back the image of Coin's men waiting at the top of the tunnel to shoot him on the other side.

Brutus tries to make Lyme go next but this time the panic hits hard and gets its claws in. This time she can't shake the image that worms its way into her thoughts — Brutus dying, choking, writhing in the dark, foaming and bleeding and gasping for air — and she can't talk and can't hear him and none of this makes sense, this is all ridiculous, fresh-Victor paranoid nightmare nonsense, but Brutus catches something in her eyes because he nods and hauls himself up the rope.

Lyme exhales, wipes at her eyes for what feels like the millionth time and climbs up after him. The rope burns her palms, and once she skids and feels the skin tear, but by the time she reaches the top — the hands grab her too, pull her over the edge, and there's Claudius alive and grinning, and Brutus there with him — the sounds are starting to filter back, muffled as though they're underwater, but better than before.

Brutus is bleeding in the side, must have taken a hit from flying debris, and Claudius has a cut above his eyebrow, but they're alive. A soldier — a rebel? wearing grey but not District 13's uniform, a sunburst patch on the arm — gestures for Lyme to follow. "We'll take you to the others," she says. "It's too risky for an in-air rendezvous so you'll have to meet up back at base."

Lyme blinks, cleans the last of the blood from her ears. "What others?" she asks Brutus as they hustle into a waiting hovercraft, ignoring the far-off rattle of gunfire. She swallows a pang of guilt at leaving her people behind, but — no, there's no way to help them here, not under Coin's control. Now that they're no longer underground, the walls closing in and the darkness choking all around them, the questions start flooding back in. "Who are we meeting? What is actually going on here? _How are you not dead_?"

"So many questions," Brutus snipes, collapsing onto a seat in the hovercraft and waving away the medic when she tries to examine the patch of blood soaking through his shirt. "Can't you just be happy to see me?"

"Don't be such an asshole." Lyme drops down next to him, and she tugs Claudius over with her. He flops down against her side, heedless of their audience, and Lyme curls her arm around his chest so he can sleep without worrying about falling off. "The last people I trusted just tried to kill me. I want to know exactly who I'm dealing with and I want to know _now_."

"Hang on," Brutus says, holding up one hand. Lyme is just about ready to murder him for real when he leans over and addresses one of their mysterious benefactors. "Hey, do we have confirmation yet? Are they out?"

The man nods, and one of the younger soldiers gives a thumbs up. "Mission accomplished. Eagle 1 away and en route to the rendezvous before enemy craft arrived, everyone present and accounted for." He pauses. "With the addition of, I believe, nine cats. That part was unexpected."

Brutus slaps a hand across his face. "Of fucking course. I don't know why I didn't think of that, I should've warned you. You should see the list of instructions she leaves when she goes out of town for a few days, there's no fucking way she'd leave them behind."

Lyme's brain finally puts the last piece together — way too slow, but cut her some slack, it's been a long day. "Wait, Callista? Are you — the Victors? You evacuated the Victors?"

"President Coin ordered the assassination of every District 2 Victor," says the soldier, spreading his hands in an apologetic gesture. "It wasn't just you. I don't know if that makes you feel better or worse."

"Now I almost hope she got buried alive," Lyme snarls, but she only has a second to enjoy that satisfying image and the clear burn of fury before the implications of what they said sink in and Lyme's stomach hits the floor.

When Lyme left the Capitol after watching Brutus die, she did so expecting never to see any of her fellow Victors ever again. Most of them are staunch loyalists, and the only way Lyme could ever see herself facing them would be on the other side of the battlefield, and so she'd fought with everything she had to stop that from happening. But now —

Her mentor and her Victor, two of the most important people in her life, and Lyme betrayed them without a second thought … and now she'll have to look them in the eye and tell them why. If only she had any idea what to say.

"Hey," Brutus says. nudging her. "You know they'll just be glad to have you back."

Lyme looks down at Claudius, dozing in a sprawl across her lap as though he didn't just escape death by his fingernails only a few minutes ago. She tries to imagine how Nero and Artemisia will look at her when she sees them, except there's nothing in their interactions that could possibly give her any basis for that much hurt and disappointment. Every time she tries her brain protests and kicks her out, like a training simulation that exceeds its programming capacities.

Lyme lets out a wild, choking laugh that the soldiers are good enough to ignore. She still doesn't have an explanation yet for who, or how, but maybe that can wait until everyone's all together. Maybe it won't matter, if the others decide they don't want Lyme anywhere near them and she has to head out on her own anyhow.

"I'm sorry I kissed you to see if you were hijacked," Lyme says. Brutus snorts and makes a show of peeling his shirt away from his ribs now that he's stopped bleeding. "And I'm really, really glad you're not dead, but I did kinda turn traitor over it, so." She rubs a hand over her face. "Can we pretend we're about five shots in for a while, at least until we get there?"

Brutus hesitates, then he lets out a gusty sigh and shifts, letting one arm fall across her shoulders. "Yeah, all right," he says, and Lyme closes her eyes and lets herself breathe him in, the sweat and dirt and blood and everything else reminding her that he's here, he's real and alive and breathing, and maybe this wasn't all for nothing after all. "Woulda sucked if you died, too. Since we're five shots in, and all."

The hovercraft banks, taking them away from the mountain, away from Two and Coin and District 13 once and for all. Lyme can only hope that this time she has a chance to make it right for real.


	8. Chapter 8

Petra wakes from dreams she can't remember, her only recollection a strange uneasiness tugging her backward into sleep, like hands dragging her down into water from the shore when all her training should have snapped her right to full alertness in an instant. Silence presses in around her, and Petra frowns, blinks at the blurred shapes of her room in the darkness, wondering what woke her when —

A hand touches her shoulder, and with it comes a nagging familiarity that tells her it wasn't the first time. Petra rolls over, ignores the twinge of pain in her hip at the first movement after so long in one position, and carefully doesn't jump at the face of the Avox standing by her bed.

Petra's chest tightens, squeezed by an invisible band. She sits up, resists the urge to clutch the blankets close just to give herself something to hold on to like a child. She can't remember the last time anyone woke her in the middle of the night, and can't imagine it would be for anything good. Already her mind races, spilling over with a hundred horrible situations, vomiting out horror stories like a kill test victim with a candidate's knife at their throat desperately trying to come up with something that will save their life. But no, doomsday scenarios won't help, and Petra closes her eyes for the count of four — one inhale and exhale — and tells herself to _stop it_.

"What happened?" Petra asks instead. She leans over, touches the cool globe next to her bed, and the room fills with soft, golden light, like sunrise over the mountains. "What's wrong? Does the President need to see me?"

She looks for a card, or even a quickly-scrawled note, but the Avox's hands are empty. There's a notepad and pen in the side table, and Petra reaches to get it, but the Avox stops her, expression solemn, a strange sadness in his eyes that Petra can't place but that sends a ripple of unease up through her and ends up lodged in her throat. All Avoxes look mournful, but this isn't the face of someone reminded daily of their punishment. This is — for the first time — an expression directed at _her_.

It's also the Avox she spoke to in sign, Petra realizes, an odd joke hitting her in the stomach. And now he's in her room in the middle of the night.

He touches two fingers in a V to his forehead, then points them, extended outward, to the far wall. _Look at that_ , he says, and Petra does, blinking away the last of the sleep-muddled confusion, before her brain finally clicks in that it's the television wall. The Avox waits for understanding to cross her face — followed closely by a wave of fear so strong even Petra can't yank it back in time — then steps back as Petra snatches up the remote and turns on the news.

District 2 is burning.

Petra had gotten used to seeing the assaults on the fortress at Eagle Pass, had even managed to swallow the instinctive wave of nauseous anger at one of their own leading the charge, knowing that her mentor's death was what drove Lyme to commit the ultimate betrayal and turn weapons on her own people. The endless, pointless attacks had even been something of a comfort, almost, like watching old tapes of Games where District 2 came out the winner. In the end the mountain would prevail and the rebels would fall back, bleeding and exhausted, and District 2 would take the day.

In a news cycle full of lashings and beatings and burning hospitals, black-bag executions that even turned Petra's stomach, rows and rows of bodies lined up in the crumbled streets until Petra could no longer identify rebel from loyalist from innocent bystander, seeing the fortress hold fast had been a strange, solid comfort at the end of a long, exhausting day.

Not this time. The mountain has fallen, brought down by volley after volley of bombs from above. In the end it's District 2 that defeats itself, the very earth and mountains used in a crushing onslaught that brings down the fortress and the mine beneath it. Petra's mind blanks, pulling her away from her room and the sights on the television — ashen-faced relief workers pulling bodies from the rocks, soldiers shouting, rebels cheering and saluting with their guns as another wave of bombs strikes the mountain, Katniss _fucking_ Everdeen speaking earnestly to a crowd of Twos — and into that faraway place inside her head.

The Avox brings her back, one hand on her arm. It's hard to breathe, every inhale fighting her as though someone's standing on her chest, driving a heavy boot into her solar plexus, but the Avox shakes his head. _I'm sorry_ , he says. For a moment Petra thinks he means about the bombing, but then he takes the remote and presses a series of buttons until a new screen appears.

It's a news channel, but there's no ticker, no talking heads in the corner, no commentary. The footage is raw, grainy, the audio still scratchy with background noise. Not live — the time stamp is a little while ago, footage running on a delay and looped — but even so, Petra didn't even know there was a background unedited channel behind the other ones. The Avox gives her that smile again, small and sad, and says _I'm sorry_ again.

Petra frowns. It's an aerial shot from a hovercraft, and she's never gotten the hang of those at any scale bigger than Arena maps. Everywhere looks the same from the top looking down, trees and mountains and rocks and dotted settlements, except there's curling smoke coming from the trees, and that means another bombing. And that's Eagle Pass off in the distance, and the line of mountains behind, and there, that's the curve of the cliffs and that's the road down to the main square, and _that_ means that the smoke is coming from —

Petra doesn't scream, but barely. Instead she shoves her fist into her mouth and bites down hard on her knuckles until she tastes blood, sharp and stinging, as the hovercraft clears the forest and the cameras zoom in on a mass of rubble near the remains of the basketball court. Petra's brain screams but she can't disappear, the faraway place is gone, it's burning and belching out smoke like the crater in the Village and she can't hide there, not this time.

It's just the one blast zone — the houses are all in tact, and for a moment Petra can breathe again, like the moment after jumping in the frozen lake where her head first cleared the surface — but then the camera switches to a body heat scanner and the Village comes up clear. No one in their homes, no one in the orchard or the mountain paths — nothing comes up on the heat scan except the remnants of an explosion in the still-burning debris from the community building, glowing white in the cool green expanse of the rest of the screen.

The water closes over her head again, the current sweeping hard and fast, and this time when Petra scrabbles for the opening, her hands find nothing but the underside of ice.

When she comes to herself, the Avox has gone. Petra unclenches her hands from her hair, digs her fist into her chest and pounds until she sucks in a few hard breaths, and while the roaring in her head only grows louder, she gets her feet beneath her. Ronan and Odin are in their rooms across the way, still sleeping — Petra knows, somehow, that the Avox didn't wake them, only her — and a creeping fear spreads its fingers through her veins.

She forces herself to stand, finds the soft, silky Capitol robe she'd abandoned in favour of one of Brutus' old shirts, and throws it over herself. Pulls her hair back from her face, slaps both hands against her cheeks in a series of rapid taps, then sits down in the desk and activates the communicator.

A late-shift Peacekeeper answers, helmet off and dressed in security greys, expression politely wary. "How can we help you, Miss Petra?"

"I need to talk to the President," Petra says. The fear is rising now, flooding her limbs like electricity, and she keeps her hands clasped below the surface of the desk to hide her trembling hands. "And yes, I know it's late, and yes, I know he hasn't asked to speak with me, and yes, I know the protocols, I _know_ , but I really, really need to talk to him."

The Peacekeeper frowns, giving Petra the sort of look her trainers used to when she let her temper carry her into a sloppy mistake. "If you know the protocols then you know why I can't let you do that," she says. "It's the middle of the night, and there are channels. I can put in a formal request, and the President's secretary will review them with him when she goes over his schedule in the morning —"

"Did you see it?" Petra bursts out. Her vision is white-hot now, like when Ambrosia's mace shattered her hip and the entire world exploded and dissolved at once into nothing but pain and fury and helpless, hopeless rage. "You have all the channels in your security office, you have to have seen it. The Village is gone. The Victors — my _family_ is —"

She can't say their names, can't let herself think about the actual, physical people lying there dead, buried under a pile of broken stone. Can't connect those bodies to the memories of the laughing, living people in her mind. Petra yanks herself back from the edge with effort, hangs there by her fingertips, feels the strain in every muscle. She's breathing hard, tears burning behind her eyes, though she doesn't let them fall. She's not sure she remembers how anymore. "I really, really need to talk to the President."

The Peacekeeper doesn't sigh, though she does press her mouth thin. "I can put a call through to his staff," she says. "It's their decision whether or not to disturb him."

"Thank you," Petra says. She twists her hands together as the screen goes blank.

She tries to count the seconds while she waits, but despite all the years of drilling in the core Career skill since childhood, now the numbers slip sideways. Petra has lost track completely by the time the image flickers and President Snow's face resolves in front of her.

The President looks older, more tired than Petra has seen him, dressed in a gorgeous velvet dressing gown but without the layers of for-television makeup that accompany his public appearances, and he looks at Petra with a serious, thoughtful expression that reminds her of Brutus. She waits for the instinctive calm, the sense that everything will be okay that always settles over her like a warm quilt.

Instead a thousand questions bubble up, churning the surface of Petra's mind to a froth like the fish mutts the year the Arena had a beautiful, placid pond filled with slow-swimming, iridescent fish that suddenly turned vicious as soon as a tribute dipped a limb in the water. Petra gropes for that feeling of safety and comes up empty.

A thousand questions, but only one bursts out.

"Was it you?"

Petra could live for a hundred years and not know why that's the one she chose. The President raises one white eyebrow and sits back. "I beg your pardon?"

There's a sour taste in Petra's mouth now, but she doesn't dare swallow. "I saw — on the television, someone bombed the Victors' Village, everyone is dead, and I needed to know, did we do something wrong, was there anything I should be doing better —"

"Petra." President Snow sits back, twin lines appearing between his eyebrows, thick lips pulled thin. "Why would I do something like that? With very few exceptions, the Victors from District 2 have been a bastion of loyalty, and you the most loyal of all. Why would I have any reason to punish you?"

 _Because we aren't_ , Petra's mind supplies. She thinks of Ronan, ordering Odin to sit so he can watch Finnick Odair continue to spew treason on live television, remembers the sharp calculation in his expression, the way his eyes tightened at the corners, how absolutely nothing Odair said seemed to surprise him. She thinks of Odin, flicking his gaze to the cameras in the corners of the room, reminding her — _warning her_ — they weren't alone, remembers the absolute and total terror that froze him in place when Petra demanded to know _the truth about everything_ , as though he'd spotted a mutation in the corner and hoped it would pass on by if only he didn't move. For the first time Petra had begun to wonder if they did their duty because they knew (Ronan) or feared (Odin) what would happen if they stopped.

And Petra could not hold herself blameless, either. She had doubted, she'd wondered what had been kept from her for her protection — what she'd been protected _from_ — she'd demanded to know the truth and forgotten the first basic rule, that privilege was granted based on unquestioned loyalty and performance of duty, and that _demands_ were not part of that equation. Odin had reminded her, and just in time, or so she'd thought … but what if it hadn't been?

Petra's mind turns over on itself, and as President Snow trains his cool, patient stare on her like a trainer asking who broke into the kitchens after hours to steal a plate of snacks, Petra feels the urge to confess rise up. She had always been the weak link in training, her classmates exasperated by her instinct to tell the trainers whenever she committed wrongdoing even as they explained how much worse it would come down on all of them if she spilled.

Except —

Except the President didn't know any of this, did he. If he thought District 2's Victors were anything but perfectly loyal soldiers, he would not have waited this long, not with the country at war. Since then Petra hasn't questioned, hasn't so much as shivered, and Ronan has come back from his meetings with Snow thoughtful and tense, but not anxious and sick to his stomach like he used to be.

The trainers used to ask Petra to confess even if they thought she hadn't done anything wrong, because they knew she would always tell the truth. She had never managed to develop the ability to lie. Not to authority, not when they trusted her, not when her obedience and their faith in her formed the foundation for everything between them.

Petra bursts into tears.

The President physically jerks back as though her tears might fly through the screen, eyes wide and shocked and almost horrified. He has never liked strong displays of emotions, Ronan said years ago. Anyone who wants to convince him of anything is much better off attempting reason. Petra can't remember the last time she cried in front of him, can't remember if she ever has, but if so it would have been early on in her recovery, drugged and exhausted and filled with gratitude at his kindness. It would not have been like this, wet, messy sobs that tear through her, but once Petra opens the floodgates she can't pull them back and she doesn't try to.

"I don't know," Petra gasps out, burying her face in her hands like she's ashamed. (It isn't hard. She is ashamed, deeply, but she knows what she needs to do.) "I don't know why I said that, I'm so sorry. I just — they're all dead, all of them, and I didn't want to think — I know the rebels are terrible, I know they're awful, but if they bombed the Village then that means they're the kind of people who would kill innocent Victors for no reason, and I thought it would be easier if it was my fault, if I had done something wrong and it was a punishment for something I did. Then there would be a reason, and I could blame myself, and they'd still be dead but I could work to redeem myself and it wouldn't be so _pointless_ —"

She almost believes it when she hears herself say it, which is the most important part of any Arena performance, the trainers used to tell her. As she sobs and the words gush out of her, Petra almost buys that she said it because she wanted there to be a reason. It makes sense, it fits with the kind of logic she's built her world with, there's no reason why anyone would disbelieve her.

It's absolutely consistent with Petra's worldview. It could even be true, except that for the first time, someone took something away from Petra and her first thoughts went to the Capitol as the ones who did it.

"I —" the President says, still visibly recoiling from the flood of emotions. "Petra, my dear, I am sorry, truly. I promise you that the rebels will pay for this. This was never meant to happen. And I swear to you, this attack did not come from me. Do you believe me?" His eyes pierce her. "Petra, this is important. Do you trust me?"

"Yes, sir," Petra says, sitting up straight. "Absolutely."

After the call disconnects, Petra sits back and wipes her face. The Avox reappears, hands her a warm towel, and Petra wipes the tears and smeared mucus away, feeling marginally better now, if hollow. The deaths dance behind her, hovering over her shoulder, still unreal.

 _Do you believe me? Do you trust me?_

She hands the rapidly cooling cloth back to the Avox, and only then does it hit Petra that while she might have meant the first, for the first time she's not sure she meant the second.

"Can you wake Ronan and Odin, please?" Petra asks. It's late, and she feels bad about waking them, but — they'll need to see this, and as selfish as this is, Petra needs not to be alone. For the first time in her life, the Capitol no longer feels like the bastion of safety and protection that it's always been — and she has no idea what to do about it. Maybe Ronan or Odin will have a better plan.

Petra pulls on an actual set of clothes, wraps herself up in the warmest robe hanging in her closet, and curls up in the corner of the couch in the common area to wait.

* * *

The murmur of voices carry through the halls of whatever abandoned building the rebels are currently using as a base. They might be moving soon, or so said the soldier in charge of Lyme's extraction, with so many Victors in one place they can't afford to keep them centralized unless they can guarantee everyone's safety, but for now they didn't have time to find another location. For now Lyme listens as they draw nearer, and even through the cloud of guilt and fear that surrounds her, there's a warm stab of pride and something like affection.

They're holding a town meeting at an ungodly hour of the night in the middle of a rebel stronghold after almost being massacred in their beds, because - well, of course they are. That's Caius presiding alongside Adessa, their voices calm and laced with authority, Caius' understated and Adessa's steely. There's Hera too, and even Iris, Adessa's mentor, even though Lyme can't remember the last time she contributed much of anything at the meetings, content to focus on her garden and leave the politicking to the others.

And then - Nero, his voice a dark rumble, punctuated by Enobaria's sharp laugh, and jagged glass shards stab Lyme in the chest. Claudius reaches over and grabs her hand, just for a second, and that's what knocks her back into place, though not for the reasons Claudius meant. Lyme is the mentor and he is her kid, and no matter how much their dynamic has been skewed sideways by whatever hell they've been through, he should not be the one holding her hand to give her comfort while she panics.

"I got this, D," Lyme says. She squeezes his fingers to thank him for the gesture, then lets go and squares her shoulders. If they hate her, they hate her, and it's less than she deserves. She's not going to run away.

Brutus glances at her, slit-eyed, then scoffs. "Don't forget the dead man walking," he says. "Watch this."

He picks up the pace and strides ahead of them into the room. "Who missed me?" he calls out.

Dead silence. Enobaria slides off Nero's lap like one of Callista's cats, which is an easy comparison to make because they're all, apparently, right the fuck here. "See?" she says, grinning widely. "I told you I had one more surprise left."

Lyme's gaze slides past Nero, finds Artemisia, sitting on Devon's far side with her arm around his waist. She's not looking at Lyme, too focused on Devon, who's gaping at Brutus slack-jawed. Artemisia laughs, her expression soft and fond and gentle, and Lyme aches to see her like this, so much open love and caring. "Better go make sure he's real," Artemisia says, nudging him.

Devon stumbles trying to disentangle himself from the low bench, trips and nearly falls on his face, but he makes it across the room and slams right into Brutus, flinging his arms around him hard and burying his face in his shoulder. "Holy shit," Devon says, muffled. "Holy shit, you're not dead. You're here, _holy shit_."

"Missed you too, kid," Brutus says quietly, working one hand into Devon's hair and scratching his fingers across his scalp. "Glad to see you didn't get yourself killed while I was gone."

Lyme should probably stop watching Artemisia, she has an uncanny sense of when someone is staring at her and she has to know, but it's like there's some magnetic force drawing her gaze. Artemisia still won't look at her, and now she gets up and makes her way over to Emory, sitting stock-still with her hands curled in her lap.

"Do I have to tell you to get over there, too?" Artemisia says, sounding amused. "Your mentor came back from the dead, I think you're allowed one public display of affection. I can threaten to kiss you if you want, so there's a lesser of two evils."

"You hush, smartypants," Emory shoots back, giving Artemisia a friendly cuff on the head. Immediately Emory freezes, shoots Lyme a fleeting look that's guilty around the eyes before her mouth goes tight, because that's a mentor gesture, and she never used to do that. Emory might have been Artemisia's senior, and Artemisia might have minded her when they went out on the town together when she was fresh out, but Emory always deferred to Lyme and would never coopt her role. She might swat her in the arm or on the knee, but that one, that's Lyme's move.

Except that Artemisia's mentor abandoned her, didn't she, and Emory's was dead, so why shouldn't they find comfort in each other?

And now, of course, Artemisia meets her eyes. Just for a few seconds, long enough for her to raise her chin and clench her jaw, long enough for the hurt in her eyes to punch Lyme hard in the face. Long enough for Lyme to want to run across the room and pull her girl to her chest, knock her to the ground and pin her down and spar until the world sets itself right again - except she can't, not yet.

Artemisia turns away, deliberate, and she grabs Emory by the arm and hauls her to her feet. "Go, your mentor will think you don't _looove_ him," she says, drawing out the word all ridiculous and dramatic. "Isn't that right, dead man?"

"Glad to see you're still a ridiculous little shit, Misha," Brutus says, and his eyes flick to Lyme for a second in apology but she curls her fingers at him in the mentor sign for _it's okay_. No point in everything being weird and shitty on her account. "And seriously, Emory, if you won't come to me, I'll go to you."

Emory still doesn't tackle him, of course. She stands with her hands at her sides, posture shifting, looking small for her large frame in a way Lyme has never managed to do. Brutus holds out one hand for her to shake - Emory relaxes, shoulders uncurling - except when she takes it, Brutus pulls her in for a hug.

"I didn't die and come back for a handshake, girl," he says into her hair. "For fuck's sake." Meanwhile Devon laughs and octopuses around to hug them both.

Lyme feels an absence at her side, sees that Claudius has slipped away. She doesn't blame him. She trusts the rebels will keep anything top secret locked down, and he got along well enough with some of Thirteen's soldiers, so he said. Maybe it'll do him good. But she can feel the others' eyes on her, and as more of the Victors come over to talk to Brutus, thumping him on the back and congratulating him - Callista brings her bald cat, Barnabus or Barnaby or Barrabus or whatever the hell his name is, at any rate Brutus absolutely hates him and Calli absolutely knows what she's doing - Lyme slinks back into a corner.

"She'll come round," Nero says, appearing at her side. He doesn't look at her yet, just leans against the wall and props himself up with one leg bent, foot braced. "She's got a lot of hurt to work through, but she loves you."

"She's not a girl anymore." Lyme pushes a hand through her hair. It's gotten longer now, almost shaggy, she hasn't had time to cut it with everything going on, and now she has to comb it back from her face. Everything feels wrong. "Hugs and mentor sparring isn't going to cut it this time."

"Probably not." Nero shrugs. "You're her mentor and you left, that means you're gonna have to prove yourself all over again. And in the end she's the one who gets to decide whether it's worth it, not you, and that's scary as shit, I know. But listen." Lyme finally allows herself to look at him, lets herself take that step and fall down twenty years just like she knew she would, suddenly eighteen and terrified, needing him to love her and hating that she cares. "I'm _your_ mentor and you're my girl. You don't have to prove _shit_ to me."

Lyme isn't going to cry again, but she lets Nero wrap his arm around her and tug her in along his side. She leans in, rests her head against him and closes her eyes, and if they sting, well that's not her fault.

After years of practice, Lyme knows exactly who's standing in front of her even before Nero goes still in warning. "I almost died today, Enobaria," Lyme says without opening her eyes. "Can I have five minutes?"

"Oh, I know, I'm the one who said we should rescue you," Enobaria says, her tone artificially light. "Ask Brutus, he was there."

Lyme snaps her head up to look at her, but that isn't Enobaria's innocent bullshit face. No, she's angry, and not even at Lyme, although she's playing casual. And now that Lyme's paying attention she looks terrible, even if she's doing her best to hide it. Wherever she's been these past weeks, it hasn't been in luxury custody like the higher-ups in Thirteen kept arguing. "They did torture you," Lyme says. She tries to keep it neutral but she can't stop the snarl. For _fuck's sake_ , they really are getting hit from both sides.

Enobaria shrugs. "I bit their fingers off first, so whatever," she says. "Look. You went all traitor because they killed Brutus and you wanted to kill Snow, right?" Lyme nods, wary, but Nero hasn't pulled out one of his many Enobaria bribes to try to stave off impending disaster, and while Lyme's alarm bells are ringing out of habit, there's nothing specific that's coming off as a warning. "I want Snow dead, too. And bullshit-President Coin. And those sick Capitol nymphos who bought Nero. And everyone in the Capitol too. And if you want them dead, and I want them dead, then it doesn't make any sense to torture you. So. Truce?"

Lyme wants to laugh - only at the end of the world when the whole country is on fire and all of them almost died in various ways can they finally get along - but she knows better. "Yeah, sounds good," she says. "You stab one eye, I'll stab the other."

"Sounds good to me." Enobaria flops on Nero's other side, and he curls his arm around her with a pleased noise.

"I'm not dead and both my girls are here," he says. "This is a pretty good day."

Across the way, Brutus pulls away from his Victors and the various conversations to get everyone's attention. "Listen," he says, calling out loud. "I hear you've got the important updates on most stuff, but there's one more thing you should know. I did die in the Arena, but it's not because Peeta Mellark killed me."

"I think we all knew that, darling," Callista drawls. "But please do tell us what happened."

"The Gamemakers killed me," Brutus says flatly. "Some kinda nerve gas. I wasn't in the poison gas zone, so it had to be a failsafe. Lyme woulda seen it on her console."

Everyone turns - it's the first time anyone has called attention to her - but thanks to the content, no one is glaring. "It's true," Lyme says. "The gas came out of the ground. He was dead in minutes, just before midnight. I - saw it on my console, his vitals went dead. There was a cannon and everything. It was definitely Gamemaker intervention. I don't know how far up it went."

"I would absolutely believe the President has lost all sense and ordered Brutus' death himself," Adessa says crisply. Everyone turns to stare at her, including Lyme, but Nero only chuckles to himself. "I've had my share of chess games with the man, and he should have retired years ago. I told him myself, once. He laughed it off, but I was right then and I'm right now. Do you know why most autocracies fail? It's because the leader fails to prepare for a successor. Instead he's entrenched himself for far too long and become paranoid, and now he's let himself get obsessed with little girls and ridiculous gestures with berries and responded with mass executions. None of this should have happened, and yet here we are."

Artemisia frowns. "Ronan was with the President when it happened, wasn't he?" she asks, looking at Nero. "Didn't he get called in for a private meeting that last night, before it all went to shit? I swear he did."

Nero squints in thought. "Shit, I dunno, I was paying attention to Bari and not much else, so I wouldn't - fuck, no, you're right, he puked his guts out on the train home, and he only does that when Snow makes him eat those fucking poisoned cookies."

Caius drags a hand down his face. "And he usually only makes Ronan eat the poisoned cookies when he's feeling angry or vindictive. So odds are, Ronan was there when the President decided to kill Brutus."

An uncomfortable silence follows until Brutus clears his throat. "Well, I'm gonna assume that Ronan didn't suggest that the President kill me, if only so I can sleep at night, but point stays. The Capitol killed me. A group of rebels saved me, same ones that saved you. A different group of rebels recruited Lyme, those're the ones that tried to kill you. And also Lyme. We can make fun of Lyme for her shitty rebel-choosing skills later. But right now, I know it's a lot to ask, and I don't know how much you've all discussed before we got here, so I'm just gonna tell you what I'm doing. I'm gonna help these rebels take down the Capitol, and then we're gonna make sure those other rebels don't fuck everything up at the same time. We want the country and our district still standing on the other side."

"What about Petra?" Emory says into the ensuing pause. "Ronan and Odin and Petra are all in the Capitol as Snow's 'guests'." She says the word with an ugly twist on the end, and until that moment Lyme would have sworn up and down that Emory is the most loyal, unquestioning Victor in the Village, that she eats duty for breakfast and shits patriotism back out, but the dark look on Emory's face just now makes Lyme look twice. "If they tried to kill you, if our loyalty no longer buys us the same currency, is it safe to leave them there?"

"That's part of what we're gonna find out," Brutus says. "And believe me, if it turns out they're not safe there I'm gonna raise high hell until we make them safe. But right now, officially, everyone in this room is dead, and that gives us a lot of power. The question is, what do we do with it."

Caius shares a glance with Luna, his Victor-sister, Ronan's firsts all those years ago. "I think if Ronan ever thought there was a viable way out, he would have taken one," he says. "He didn't do this for fun, or for power, or because he liked he idea of sending children off to fight. The fact that he never did meant he never saw one. if we can finally give him one, I say we take it."

Callista bristles hard enough that two cats fall off her shoulders. "I am grateful not to have been murdered by vicious traitors, and I won't pretend that I've enjoyed watching my children die every year for the entertainment of mincing Capitol dilettantes, but does that mean we have to turn around and become traitors ourselves? With all the privileges we've enjoyed over the decades while everyone else starves in their filthy districts, turning around and stabbing the Capitol now would be the height of hypocrisy."

"Dear child, I had to sit back and watch those crones paw at my Nero for _thirty years_ while I smiled at them and thanked them for the honour," Adessa says in a calm voice that drops the temperature of the room by twenty degrees. "Hypocrisy is not my chief concern."

"Oh boy, this is gonna take a while," Nero says in a low voice. "I say we have a seat."

* * *

Claudius should probably feel bad about abandoning Lyme to the wolves, it's just - he can't deal with all of them. He tells himself it's better for Lyme if he leaves, the other Victors will respect her more if he and she aren't clinging to each other, but honestly, he's just being a coward. Claudius has always felt out of place in the Village, he was never the biggest or the strongest or the most loyal, he's always known he was a traitor in the making, and he always wondered whether everyone else knew it too. Now it's out in the open like a corpse rotting and peeling in the sun, and he'll have to deal with it eventually, just - not ... right ... now.

He wanders the halls, does his best to avoid anything that seems like it might be important, and finally comes across a small lounge. There's a pair of rebels there around his age, a guy and a girl - they look like they would've been in Residential around the same time as Claudius, maybe a few years behind him, if they'd been in Two - tossing darts at an ancient dartboard at the far wall.

"Hey," Claudius says, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Mind if I...?"

The girl goes to lob him one of the darts, and Claudius waves her off. "Nah, that's okay, I just need to be not - in there for a while right now, if it's cool with you."

Her mouth twitches. "Avoiding feelings, huh?" she says, then winds up and sends her dart into the bulls-eye in a long, smooth arc. "Now that I understand. Chill here as long as you need."

"Ugh, thanks." Claudius drops onto an ancient sofa that rattles under his weight, and he flings one hand over his eyes to block out the flickering fluorescent light overhead.

"Selene, really?" says the guy, exasperated but the kind that comes with love, and he comes over and kicks at the sofa to get Claudius' attention. "If you actually want to talk about any of those feelings you can, by the way. That is also a cool, healthy thing to do."

"To him, not me," Selene clarifies cheerfully. "You want to talk about feelings, go to Dash. You want to avoid your feelings like a champ, I'm your girl. Especially if you like to shoot things."

Claudius laughs. "It's not even my feelings, it's everyone else's," he says, waving vaguely. "Messy reunions, betrayal, trust issues, whatever, I just don't want to deal with it all right now. Wait, hang on." He sits up. "You don't talk like the rest of them, are you from Two?"

They exchange glances, and Claudius holds up his hands. "No, listen, I'm not going to ask a bunch of questions, I've just spent a lot of time with soldiers from Thirteen and civilian rebels from Two and it's _fine_ but it's not the same. And you'd think having the other Victors around would help, except I kind of walked out on them last summer, so it really doesn't. If there are other Careers here it would make me feel way less like a freak show, that's all I'm saying."

The two of them continue their wordless conversation, and finally Dash says, "We're ex-Peacekeepers. Our squad pulled Brutus from the Arena. We're the only other Careers on the base, besides the Victors, but we're working on recruiting more."

"Now that you have Devon, you probably can," Claudius says, and he's not even making fun this time. Devon could probably charm Snow's whole advisory team over to his side with enough time. "Sorry if that was intense or something just now, Thirteen is - well, it's weird, I don't know what to tell you. They used to make me say 'I'm a murderer' before they'd give me my food."

Dash recoils like he smelled something rotten. "Wait, really? That's just fucked up. Especially since I'm pretty sure any soldier who's gone into open combat will have killed more than a teenaged Victor."

"That's what I thought, but who knows." The memory is distant now, faint with the sharp edges comfortably blunted with time and distance. He can tell the story without the anger rising. "Eventually stopped when I reminded them that yeah, I am a murderer, so maybe they shouldn't push me."

Selene lets out a sputtering sort of sound that's suspiciously like a giggle, and Claudius turns and raises an eyebrow at her. "Sorry, it's just -" She goes to collect the darts from the board, probably to give herself a cover. "That's really funny to me that they'd pick on you, because you were like -"

Claudius lets his other eyebrow join the first. "Am I going to like where this is going?" he asks Dash.

Dash looks as baffled as Claudius feels, which is the weirdest part. "I actually have no idea."

"You were the _cuddly_ Victor," Selene says, yanking out the last of the darts, then whirling to grin at Claudius in sharp-edged challenge. "I mean, seriously, you were nice to all the babies in the pre-Games training week, and then, what, you shared your dad's name and ate chocolate with Seven in the Arena, and you gave him a nice clean death and didn't even make him wet himself? After all those stories about how you killed someone in Residential and nobody was supposed to even _look_ at you wrong or you'd fuck us all up? Everyone was scared of you, we were all so excited to see what you'd do when you went in, and then you were, like, the baby-whisperer. Everybody was disappointed."

Claudius stares at her for a long moment as his brain struggles to piece that together and come up with a response, but he may as well be trying to run on ice in sock feet. "I think I liked being a murderer better," he says faintly. "The _baby-whisperer_? I'm sorry, what the _fuck_?"

Selene cracks up and flops onto the opposite edge of the sofa, looking very pleased with herself. "Maybe you should have thought of that before you made nicey-nice," she says, still grinning.

"I'll tell you what," Claudius says, pointing a finger at her and trying not to feel too much like Brutus for the gesture. "Go back in time, convince the Capitol not to fill my Arena with twelve-year-olds, and then we'll talk about alternate strategies."

"Good point, because then you could've joined the Pack and made out with the boy from Four, he was hot," Selene says meditatively. "See? Much more entertaining already."

Claudius squawks, and Dash rolls his eyes and shoves Selene's feet off the couch so he can drop down beside her. "Talking about feelings is still on the table," Dash reminds Claudius in an exaggerated conciliatory voice. "Unless you'd rather start encouraging Lene's more creative fantasies. She can also play a mean game of 'fight, fuck, mentor'."

"How about this," Claudius says, a little too loudly, as Selene's grin widens. "I'm not going to pretend I have anything close to elite Peacekeeper training, but I passed my combat rating, and you've got to be mostly doing recon and pickup missions right now, right? What if I came with you, if your CO said it's okay? I keep my head down, I take orders, I think on my feet and I'm good in a fight. What I really can't do is stay cooped up in here going stir-crazy while wondering what everyone else is secretly thinking about me."

"I mean, that's definitely up to Rigel," Dash says, looking at Selene with a shrug. "But yeah, it's fine with me."

"Sure, why not," Selene says. "Like I said, if you'd rather put yourself in danger than talk to someone about your feelings, I'm all for it."

This is probably a terrible idea, but Claudius laughs anyway, and a few of the knots in his shoulders loosen. "I feel better already. Also kind of dizzy, now that I think about it, I haven't eaten since yesterday, probably, and I have no idea what time it is. Is there food anywhere?"

"Calling it food is being a bit generous, but yeah, there's stuff to eat," Dash says. "C'mon, commissary's closed this time of night but there's always leftovers."

The Victors have moved on from awkward reunions to a heated, though moderated, discussion about next steps when they pass by, but Claudius doesn't bother to stay. They might argue, and not everyone might like the idea, but at the end of the day, they're survivors. None of them would be here if they weren't, and trusting the Capitol is no longer the way to stay alive.

"They're not all as loyal as you think, you know," Selene says. Claudius glances sharply at her. "We have their files, and you might have been the only one on an official watchlist, but there were others with warnings. You might be surprised."

"Huh," Claudius says, and makes a note to ask her later. "Wait, I was on a _watchlist_?"

* * *

They decide to stay, not that Artemisia ever thought it would be a question. They're survivors, and this is how to survive, it's simple math. Nobody is stupid enough to think they can throw themselves at the mercy of the Capitol and hope for a miracle - not after the Quarter Quell, anyway. It would feel like the end of an era, or something poetic, if it didn't feel sad. So much time, so many lives wasted, now that even District 2's most loyal have given up pretending.

Devon offers to help with recruiting, infiltrating Peacekeeper units to try to turn individual squads or garrisons around, and Emory of course says she'll help with supply runs and recon missions and anything that needs help. Adessa immediately says she'll liaise with Beetee, which Artemisia really hopes doesn't mean weird phone-sex via code, but with them who even knows. Caius and Luna are going to help with Capitol planning and logistics, since even long into retirement they still know all of Ronan's contacts and remember a staggering amount of information. Some of them even decide to fight, if it comes to that. Others will help take care of the injured Victors from the other districts, still recovering from torture.

Callista is the notable abstention. She's not going to argue once the group reached consensus, and she isn't going to betray them or turn them in, but the idea of actively turning traitor herself is too much. She has her cats to take care of and that will be enough, and no one tries to convince her otherwise. The world might have gone to hell, but the Village respects everyone's decisions.

Including those who've betrayed them and returned. All water under the bridge, apparently, welcome back, we're all traitors here.

Funny enough, no one comes to Artemisia asking her what job she wants to do. It's not that she has some kind of huge moral objection like Callista, it's not even that she has any opinion at all, it's just - she can't muster up enough of anything to care, not yet. Everyone is clinging for something new to hold onto, a new rock to stand on, except as far as Artemisia can tell, this new cause could be just as shitty as the last one. Maybe later she'll catch the fervour, but right now what she really wants to do is sleep for a week and for nobody to want anything from her, at all, ever again. Especially not Lyme.

She can feel Lyme actively trying not to pressure her, which makes it worse. If Lyme would just push her, if she'd force a confrontation and try to make Artemisia forgive her right now before she's ready, then Artemisia would have the excuse to snap and tell her the fuck off. But no, she's playing the good mentor and giving her _space_ , respecting her _boundaries_ , except all that's doing is pissing Artemisia the hell off. Which, of course, is unfair, and only makes Artemisia feel more like shit, and it's just - aaaaargh. Everything about this is terrible.

She'd actually intended to forgive her mentor, that's the worst part. The mountain exploded, and Artemisia knew that Lyme had been attacking it, and when she thought that Lyme might be killed in the blast then all of this, all the petty anger and her jealousy and all those ugly, rolling feelings, they all felt stupid and small and unimportant. Artemisia told herself that if Lyme came back, if she walked through that door, then she'd take it as a sign, accept the second chance, let it all go and start over.

But then Lyme did walk in, looking every bit like she felt like shit and expected everyone to treat her like it, and every good intention Artemisia had flew into the air and then caught fire, like pretty little butterflies doused in gasoline and set alight. Seeing her mentor's face inspired way fewer warm and fuzzy feelings than it did the urge to tear across the room and punch her square in the nose.

Which would be satisfying, but maybe not so helpful, and Artemisia can be mature, so. Here she is, hiding in the room they've given her for now, curled up in the corner of her bed and wishing she didn't feel like she had earthworms crawling under her skin.

"Hey," Devon says softly, closing the door behind him. "I asked to be assigned together, if that's okay."

"Yeah," Artemisia says. Everything feels hollowed-out and empty, like the inside of a footprint at the end of winter when it fills with slush and mud. "Yeah, no, that's good, I don't want to sleep alone."

Devon comes to sit beside her, and Artemisia really wants to unload everything onto him, her anger and confusion and the ugly, twisting snarl of feelings inside her, except that for the first time in months he looks actually, genuinely happy, practically glowing from the inside out. He'd stuff that all back in to care for her if she asked him to, but that's exactly why she won't. Sometimes she really misses being a selfish teenager who couldn't be bothered to care about anybody else.

"Except for tonight," Artemisia says, nudging him in the shoulder. "I'm so tired I could fall asleep in the hallway and I wouldn't care, and your mentor is back from the dead. You go, I promise I'm fine."

"Mish," Devon says, giving her a flat look.

She rolls her eyes. "Okay, I'm not fine, I'm pissed at Lyme and I'm pissed at myself for not being over it, but you being here would not make that better. What will make me feel better is knowing that you and Emory actually got your miracle for once. Better?"

Devon leans down and kisses her forehead. "I'll be back in a bit, okay? I saw Brutus was bleeding, so I'm sure Emory will shame him into getting some rest before too long. And for the record, you're allowed to be mad, and you're allowed to stop being mad whenever you're ready. They're your feelings."

"Thanks, Mom," Artemisia calls after him. After he leaves she turns off the light, rolls herself up tight in the blanket and counts her breaths until she falls into a restless sleep.

* * *

Rigel knows better than to let confidence become complacence because that's how a good commander gets sloppy, but there's nothing like a few big wins to boost morale. He lets the Resistance bigwigs handle the other operations as usual and focuses on his squad, which has recently added one V67, Claudius, to its ranks.

It works well, really. He's a good kid, smart and willing to take orders even if Dash is the one taking point on a half-squad mission, no ego problems there, and he's no Selene but he's decent with a rifle and straps one of Nero's machetes to his back and that makes him deadly enough in case of a fight.

Not that Rigel will ever send him into one on purpose, but there was that one snafu with the gangs and Selene killing people with a light pole that they've never managed to straighten out, and if nothing else Rigel is pretty sure Claudius can handle her if she slips into combat regression. Having a Victor on retainer might even be handy if Selene ends up losing it again, who knows.

Plus Marius remembers the kid from Residential during that weird period when Claudius was living there but before he took the entrance exam and moved in officially; they were just far apart enough in age that Claudius used to sidle over and hang with them during free time. Claudius doesn't remember him, of course, all the older kids must meld together in his memories by now, but Marius has proudly shared some stories of slipping ten-year-old Claudius some knives on the sly and egging him on into throwing them at other trainees. It's cute, and better yet it shows there was a sane foundation under whatever the Centre and the Arena put on top of him.

Over the next few days, after making sure they all get a decent amount of sleep, Rigel sends the kids on some cake missions, pulling recon and meeting informants. It all goes well, just enough complications to show that Claudius can handle it if something isn't exactly according to plan, and they all come back chatting and happy. Selene is usually grinning and Claudius is usually half-scandalized, with Dash laughing at the both of them, and after all the absolute shit he's put his kids through these past few weeks, Rigel is glad to give them something to do that isn't going to keep Dash up with nightmares and force Selene to compartmentalize so hard he's not sure when she'll ever have the time to pull it all out again.

The rest of the Victors adjust to their roles well. Emory - daughter of a Peacekeeper, she says, with a self-effacing, one-shouldered shrug - takes to missions as though she was born to it, and she and Devon immediately start intercepting some of Thirteen's squads on away missions, turning them to the Resistance with curated information on Coin's atrocities. Adessa, in a coded message exchange with Beetee, even manages to solve the mystery of the final MIA Victor - Rokia from Six - who, turns out, has been in Thirteen, keeping a low profile and all but living in the hangar bays with the hovercraft crews. Lyme looks strangely furious at that, but Rigel isn't going to ask.

Everything is going very well, which means Brutus is right on schedule when he decides to make Rigel's life difficult.

"You want me to what?" Rigel says. It's a useless sentence, and they're both Two and men who appreciate each other's time, but at the same time - _what_?

"I want to rescue Petra and the others," Brutus says, crossing his tree-trunk arms across his chest. Rigel never thought much about the age difference between them before, not when they've been running missions together and Brutus takes his orders without question, but it's been a little harder recently with Devon around. He's Brutus' kid and a full two years older than Rigel, and that little factoid keeps dancing around the back of Rigel's mind as Brutus stares him down. "She's in the Capitol, and we have everyone else here. I want her safe."

"Now is the safest time for her to be in the Capitol," Rigel points out. "We have proof that Coin's rebels absolutely will kill her given the chance. With the rest of you presumed dead, Snow will want to keep her safe and alive as political leverage, to deepen the contrast between his mercy and Coin's senseless brutality." He waves his hand. "Or however they'll spin it, but you know what I mean. Point being, right now she's the safest she's ever been."

Brutus clenches his jaw until a muscle jumps. "Listen, you know I respect you, really I do, but she's my girl, and I want her here. I never did a damn thing wrong and the Capitol still killed me, I'm sure you get why it's hard for me to leave her there. Plus it's only a matter of time until Ronan eats a cookie that poisons him for good."

Rigel counts back from ten in his head and wishes Marius weren't meeting with the requisitions officer about a supply run. He's the one who's better with this sort of thing, Rigel has a temper and isn't as good at talking people down from stupid decisions if they're hell-bent on throwing logic out the window. "We can't risk it now," he says, doing his best to exude patience from all angles. "Our best chance for success is a stealth extraction, and as soon as we do that, it will tip off whoever's in charge that there are Scouts with the Resistance. It won't take much for them to realize what happened. We want to avoid tipping them off as long as possible."

Brutus' expression darkens. "What if they're being held prisoner right now? She hasn't made a new propo in a while, what if -"

"You know I want her safe," Rigel says, still speaking calmly. He thinks, unhelpfully, of Brin, wonders whether they've killed her by now or if she's still being tortured for information. He swallows the shudder and forces himself to focus. "But we can't jeopardize everything by pushing up the timeline."

"What about a recon," suggests Marius, coming up beside him and shooting him an apologetic look. "We can send the kids in to take a look easy enough, in and out, no fuss. Make sure she's safe, nothing's wrong, everything's fine, put your mind at ease until it's time for the extraction. How's that sound?"

Brutus leaps like a mutt on a fresh corpse. "Yeah, except I'd need to know for sure that she's -"

"Oh, of course, absolutely," says Marius, smooth as anything. "It makes sense to have a Victor along, since this is a Victor-related mission, that's why we'd send Claudius along with Selene and Dash. He's been working with them, he knows their signals and they're already meshing together as a team, plus his Arena specialty was stealth. He's the best candidate."

 _Quit while you're ahead_ , Rigel thinks, silently warning Marius not to go too far and thank Brutus for coming up with the idea like he might with a recalcitrant Capitol client, but Marius is too good at his job for that and stops well short of the danger line. As it is Brutus looks mulish, aware he's been played but too well-versed in the game himself to be able to complain about it, and Marius' solution is a solid compromise.

Finally Brutus sighs and drops his arms. "Fine," he says. "But if they go and something's wrong, they get her and the others out. Can we agree on that?"

Rigel would really like a week off in District 4 and one of those Capitol massage chairs that mould to the body, but he'll take what he can get. "Agreed," he says. "I'll inform my squad."

* * *

"Selene," Dash says, using his 'listen to me being very patient for other people's benefit' voice, "would you like to borrow my binoculars? You're giving Claudius the creeps."

Selene looks up from where she's been watching Petra through her sniper scope. Her finger was nowhere near the trigger and her rifle is safetied anyway, which Dash well knows, but Claudius does look a little jumpy. Selene bites back a sigh, swallows a remark about civilians and takes the binoculars, ignoring how looking through them always makes her feel exposed instead of safe and settled the way she does when she uses her rifle.

"Lot of guards, but they're on protection duty," Dash says for Claudius' benefit. "Or at least they want anyone watching to think so. Lene, can you spot a second detail?"

It's a fair question. They've done it themselves once or twice, it's a good intro gig for young Scouts to get their feet wet in the mansion, letting one squad play visible bodyguard for visitors while another tails them in secret. Most of the President's "honoured guests" never realize he's invited them there for anything other than dinner until it's too late.

Selene swaps the binoculars back out for her rifle scope. She'd never actually see the second squad, they're far too good for that, but she tracks the movements of the guards she can see, notes where they look and stand and where they don't to see if it follows the pattern she was trained in. "No, we're clear," she says finally, lowering her rifle again. "It's just the one squad. For now, at least, it looks like they're still on official guest status."

"Well, that's something," Claudius says. His voice sounds funny, like he's trying not to be too jealous, and yeah, Selene can understand that feeling. She's seen his file, knows he's one of the few District 2 Victors to be personally threatened by President Snow (and, okay, she called him cuddly but that is a little badass), and she wasn't kidding about the watchlist. Meanwhile here's Petra, strolling across a beautiful garden terrace and pausing to smell a flower the size of her head.

Wait.

"Let me see the binoculars again for a second?" Selene asks, casual, casual. A little too casual, because Dash shoots her a sharp look as he hands them over, but Selene lets her gaze flick to Claudius for a second and Dash nods and lets it go. Claudius still doesn't know what year Selene graduated, and she'd like to keep it that way as long as possible.

She focuses on Petra again, and yeah, sure enough, she's bending down and lowering her face to the blossoms. Except Petra hates flowers, she hates the smell - thinks it's cloying - and she's allergic besides, which of course Selene never failed to make fun of her for, and that means she's pretending. Which means she's doing this to give herself a second where no one's looking at her, and _that_ means -

Petra kneels down, bracing herself against her cane, face mostly hidden from the guards by the various flowering plants, and looks out over the terrace. To anyone who happened to catch her she would look contemplative, lost in thought, a girl happily enjoying the beauty of nature or whatever, nothing suspicious here.

Selene is not anyone. Selene spent eleven years in lockstep with Petra, breaking noses and grinding elbows into each other's backs, finding every weak point and going straight for it at full speed. By the end of training she knew Petra as well as she knew herself - maybe better, since Selene was a collection of Arena personas and whatever the trainers wanted her to be, whereas Petra was always, almost hilariously, straightforward.

And the thing is, Selene has seen this face before.

Most recently - and famously - she saw it projected on the wall of the detox dorm gym, when the platforms rose and Petra scoped out the Arena and saw a Cornucopia filled with nothing but brutal, heavy maces. No one else noticed, because Petra knew better than to let them - the trainers even commented how well she'd handled it - but Selene saw it, the way she held herself still, her posture stiff instead of fluid, nostrils flared and eyes just a little bit too wide.

It's not the Arena she remembers now, though. Funny enough, what Selene thinks of now is a day way back in training, when they were maybe eight or nine, and the trainers lined them all up along a high platform and told them they had to jump onto the mats. Selene had been super excited - she got in trouble for jumping off of things at school! now they were _telling_ her to do it! - and then she'd happened to look over at Petra.

Petra had frozen, all the while trying her best to look like absolutely nothing was wrong. The jump was too high, and the trainers hadn't taught them how to fall properly, or given them any techniques like they usually did; they wanted to see what everyone did first. Worse, when any kids looked too scared or visibly chickened out, the trainers called them down and made them sit out against the wall while the others jumped - and even back then, Selene knew that Petra was just as scared of being caught as she was of the actual danger.

Of course, Selene had laughed in her face, called her a big fat baby, then took a giant leap onto the mats. Not five seconds later Petra landed beside her, tackled her to the mats, and punched her right in the face.

Now, as Petra pretends to admire the flowers, Selene sees the same terror etched underneath the casual smile on her face, the hard edge of desperation in her eyes. Something has her terrified, but just like that day back in training, like those first moments in the Arena, when weakness meant failure - meant death - even worse is the possibility that the wrong person might realize she's scared.

In the Arena, Petra had years of training and an objective and enough inspiration and spontaneity to take a shitty situation and turn it around to her advantage. In training, whenever something unknown scared her - standing over the mats, the day they stood shivering at the edge of the frozen lake, the first time their cohort snuck out after hours - Selene usually went first and egged her on. After that, Petra's natural hatred of being left behind overrode her fear.

The difference now is that whatever it is, whatever new, unknown thing has her scared and frozen and terrified that someone is going to catch her, this time it's not a game, there are no rules and no trainers with the right answer, and no one to show her how to jump.

Petra holds her breath and sticks her face in a giant ruffled flower, then turns and says something disarming to the nearest guard (Selene doesn't think about who it might be), and actually appears to succeed in making them chuckle.

"We should go," Selene says, dropping the binoculars. "They're safe, and we shouldn't push our luck."

She lets Claudius and Dash both take a look before they go, just to make sure. Both of them agree that Petra looks happy and relaxed where she is, and there's no sense in risking the extraction just yet.

"This feels weird," Claudius says as they head back to their transport. "I mean - it's not like we're friends or anything, I'm pretty sure she actually hates me? But walking away and leaving her, it's ... well, it's weird."

"Yeah?" Selene says noncommittally. "I guess it would be."

Marius pulls Selene aside that night. "I saw your report," he says. Selene turned in a very brief, very professional report with her recommendation, nothing more, letting Dash and Claudius handle the observations. He'll know what that means. "Now tell me what you saw."

Selene does. She leaves out the part about training and being eight years old, because that sounds absurd even to her, but she doesn't need that to explain how she knows Petra is scared. Marius trusts her judgement on this one.

When she finishes, Marius frowns thoughtfully, tapping one finger against his bicep. "Do you have any idea what might have happened?"

Speculation is a dangerous game in their line of work, but Selene has had some time to think this one over. "Petra has always been ridiculously loyal," Selene says. "And I don't mean as a Victor, I mean - she used to take the whole 'bringing honour to my district' thing seriously when we were _kids_ , even, when everyone else was doing it for the snacks." Marius' mouth twitches, and Selene reins in the automatic exasperation. "Sorry, I just mean - she always meant it 100%, that's why she's Snow's pet, she never had to fake it for a minute. Now ... I think maybe she's faking it. For whatever reason, I think she's finally figured out that the Capitol isn't as safe as she thought it was. But I couldn't begin to guess why. Even a few months ago I would've bet it would never happen."

As much as Selene made fun of Petra for being the perfect little automaton, she didn't make it through to the elite Peacekeeper corps because she didn't believe anything they espoused. It's not fun, having everything pulled out from under you and starting over. Selene can't imagine doing it alone, never mind with the President watching every step of the way.

"Whatever you do, don't tell Brutus," Marius says, giving her a look that's half warning, half pleading. "They're still safe where they are for now, but if he hears his girl is scared I'm pretty sure he'll hare off after her on foot in the middle of the night if he has to."

Selene snaps off an amused salute. "Yes, sir," she says. "Don't worry, I won't."

Empathy for Petra, Selene thinks, what a weird thought. She can't decide which of their childhood selves would hate it more.

Either way, she has no intention of indulging in it. Rigel wanted to discuss the rumours of a civilian uprising in Two in the wake of Coin's takeover, and so Selene puts away all thoughts of her former classmate and heads off at a jog to find him.


	9. Chapter 9

One expected side benefit to having Claudius come along on their missions is that with a Victor on their squad, nobody can accuse Selene of avoiding the Victors - which she is most definitely sort of doing. It's not their fault, it's all just kind of _a lot_ more than anything else, they were every kid's heroes growing up in Two, and seeing them now every day en masse is more than a little unnerving.

Especially given that Selene has read all their files; she knows everything from their favourite foods to their most frequented Capitol establishments to their sexual peccadillos, thanks to the level of detail that Snow demanded for his personal dossiers. At the time it had been shocking, the kind that thrills with a secret naughtiness like she was doing something wrong, not dissimilar to the first time she sneaked out of Residential as a young trainee. She'd never expected to have to share a breakfast table with Callista and have her mind helpfully replay the Victor's list of suppliers for specialty club drugs and custom bondage gear.

Not to mention, Selene has gotten this far without anyone figuring out she was runner-up for her year, but if anyone is going to figure it out, it's Devon and his eidetic memory for names and faces. He writes letters to every graduating class of Seniors who makes it to the end but doesn't win the gold bead, Selene included, wishing them well in their future careers. Lachlan kept his, probably took it home and framed it and still has it in his new room in the Centre - he's a trainer now, working with pre-Senior Residential kids, last she heard. Selene, relieved not to be the one hobbling around on smashed bones, feeling guilty for thinking it and working overtime to pretend she didn't care either way, threw hers away as soon as she got it.

If Devon remembers Selene, odds are he'll mention it to Brutus, and then Brutus will wonder why Selene never said anything, and then Selene will have to explain that not only was she his Victor's classmate, but they actually hated each other for a good solid ten years, and - it's complicated, and messy, and this is war, and complicated and messy are the last thing Selene needs right now.

And as for Petra - as much as Selene doesn't want to admit it, seeing her former classmate, knowing that soon they'll rescue her and come face to face and all the careful distance and separation Selene has put so much work into will come tumbling down, it only makes the growing mess in Selene's head a worse jumble. When Selene and Petra were classmates Selene was a different person, sharper and nastier and uncaring, she broke her classmates' noses and snapped their arms in half because she felt like it. She made her first kill and felt nothing, not even a hint of guilt or regret. Selene has come a long way since then, but the war, the fighting, has dragged her back - and when she finally sees Petra and looks her in the eye, she knows full well that Petra won't see the Peacekeeper three years out, she'll see the girl who fought and scrapped for the gold and lost.

Luckily, though, Claudius is just as eager to avoid the others as she is, so the three of them end up hanging out a lot together. Claudius doesn't ask personal questions - he still hasn't figured out Dash is from Four, she and Dash now have a bet going on how long it will take - and he trains almost every spare minute with an intensity that would surprise Selene if he weren't, well, a Victor. She's heard some of the other rebels make bemused noises about it, since to them the Victors killed teenagers years ago and then have been mostly television personalities since, but well, that's the outer districts for you.

"I think it's a good idea," Marius says. "The extra training, I mean."

Selene frowns but doesn't argue, waiting for the explanation. They hardly have time for training, what with being assigned to missions every other day, but she trusts Marius. Unlike her trainers, both at the Centre and the Peacekeeping Academy, Marius always takes the time to tell her why he gives his recommendations. None of this 'because I said so' outside of combat. "They took the stronghold at Eagle Pass but the district is fighting back," he says. "The mining towns and the poorer parts of the district went to the rebels, but there's strong resistance at the district centre and the Peacekeeper boroughs. Not just Peacekeepers, but civilians too, and Coin's people aren't particular about who they're killing. We're going to be sending squads in to keep the Capitol from retaking the district but also Coin's rebels from massacring the civilians. That means the fighting is going to be up close and messy."

For a moment she almost pretends she doesn't know what he's talking about, but the memory of the light pole in her hands - the sharp _crack_ of metal against bone, the twist of satisfaction in her gut as the bodies fell - is still sharp, like the scent of smoke curling in her nostrils. "You need to know I can handle it if I can't use my rifle," Selene says. It comes out professional, even neutral. Her image trainers would be proud.

Marius gives her a sympathetic look, and okay, maybe she didn't quite manage to keep how much she hates this whole mess out of her voice. "Just a few basic drills," he says. "Like back at the Academy."

Selene blows out a gust of air. "All right, sure," she says, because fair enough. If she's going to be fighting Peacekeepers and civilians in ex-Career town - she doesn't let herself think about former classmates - then she _really_ can't be snapping and bashing in anyone's skull with the nearest blunt object.

Dash helps. "Just like old times," he says with a grin, and Selene laughs because it's true, that's how they met. She and Dash had been unarmed combat partners as cadets, and she had been under orders to not kill him. She'd kicked his ass soundly, he'd rebounded from the bruised ego, and they'd become firm friends from the start.

To bring things closer to real-world scenarios, Marius gives Dash a knife and tells Selene to take it from him without harming either of them. The knife doesn't actually make Dash any more dangerous, not when Selene grew up sparring with Petra, and she vividly recalls the absolute futility of trying to separate her rival from her favourite weapon. But the point isn't actually for Dash to hurt her, it's to give him a weapon that an opponent in the street is likely to be carrying, to snap Selene into the headspace she might find herself in out there on the field, and it ... helps. It's not perfect, but it helps. Drilling takedowns helps Selene rewrite the old patterns all over again, provide new pathways for muscle memory in case her brain slips away, and if nothing else the repetition doesn't leave a lot of room for headcasing.

Claudius soon joins them, and he doesn't ask what they're doing, just picks up his weapons and chooses a spot across the room to train. He's borrowed a pair of machetes from Nero, since no one brought any of his swords during the Village evacuation, for close-quarters fighting, and runs through shadow drills at half, normal and double speed.

"I don't know why you think people call you the ugly Victor," Dash jokes that night after they finish training and grab a bite to eat at the commissary. "Have you watched yourself fight? I'd totally make you my exception."

Claudius chokes on his protein slop, and Selene helpfully thumps him on the back. "Go fuck yourself," he says, when he can finally get enough air, and Dash smiles sunnily at him.

Unfortunately, they don't have a lot of time for training, because Marius wasn't wrong about the unrest in Two. For the first time, the Scouts are being sent into open combat.

Not as Peacekeepers this time, though. In the ready room, they trade their battered white armour for rebel-issue fatigues, grey uniforms with a sunburst insignia on the sleeve to differentiate them from Coin's people in a firefight. Selene insists on keeping her rifle no matter what anyone says, damn it, because the nondescript gun the rebels try to foist on her has awful aim. Anyone who sees her with her rifle will think she killed a Peacekeeper and took it from them, anyway.

(That's not true. Any Peacekeeper who sees Selene fight will know immediately who and what she used to be no matter what she's wearing, but they can't help that.)

Selene hesitates before donning her helmet. It's a standard rebel hard-hat, not her full Peacekeeper black glass helmet faceplate, and somehow that drives it home even more. This is it. For the first time, they're going into the thick of things - no more skulking around, no more avoiding fights unless they absolutely have to. They're going to Two as rebels, and they're going to be fighting Peacekeepers, and Selene has to be okay with that.

She is okay with that, or at least she thinks she is, but she also never thought she'd end up reverting back to Centre-mode -

"You okay?" Dash asks, pausing midway through wrestling on a rebel-issue boot. Claudius, tugging on his jacket, stops to give her a curious look.

"Yeah," Selene says, professional, professional. Claudius goes back to cussing under his breath at his jacket zipper, which appears to have jammed halfway up. "I'm good. Let's go."

For this mission, they're dropped off at the main town, where Coin's rebels are trying to take it by force. It's a messy business, according to intel; most Centre alumni live in the ex-Career boroughs in the city, and they're not about to let the rebels march in and take the place without a fight, but nobody learns to fight against guns in the Program. That won't stop them trying, but unless someone interferes, the civilians will be cut down in the streets - and with the Capitol already declaring the district a loss, there will be no one to stop the bloodshed.

It's the Scouts' job to be that someone.

As far as first combat missions go, Selene is fine with this one. It's clear-cut, straightforward - and honestly, she's looking forward to having an opponent she can shoot without any qualms whatsoever. That probably wouldn't look great on a psych eval, but this is war, and at this point she'll take what she can get.

When they get to the main town, the squad splits into pairs. Rigel and Marius guard the rear, while Selene and Dash - and Claudius - make up the core strike force. He wasn't officially tasked with this mission, but he showed up to the ready room with a grim-jawed expression and nobody bothered to argue.

It's difficult, dangerous work, made doubly so by the need to check targets before firing. They're under orders not to fire on civilians unless to defend themselves, but the civilians aren't going to be looking to see whether the rebels are shooting at each other or wearing different insignia. As far as they're concerned, there's loyalists and then there's traitors, and Selene knows uncomfortably well which side she falls into. Luckily most people they run into are noncombatants, eager to stay out of the way and let them pass, and those who might want to put up a fight seem more baffled than anything when Selene orders them to stay inside rather than opening fire.

Coin's people, on the other hand, are all fair game, and since they went into this expecting nothing more than civilian resistance, the Second Rebellion has the element of surprise. As they advance through the city, Selene and Dash fall into enough of a rhythm that they pick up an old game.

"I've got twenty," Dash says in an undertone, flattening himself against the wall as they catch their breath in an alleyway.

Selene grins at him. "Twenty-nine," she says, singsong.

"No fair, you got the good rifle." As the team demolitions man, Dash didn't have his own rifle assigned to him when they stole the hovercraft and ran. He's been making do with rebel-issue gear since they made the switch.

"Oh, cry me a river, fisherboy."

Most of the other rebels are too far away to hear, and Selene had purposely been keeping her voice down to avoid coming off sounding too bloodthirsty to the non-Careers on their squad, but Claudius glances over, an unreadable expression on his face. There's a bloody gash across his forehead, making him look appropriately savage. "You're counting kills?"

"Shots on target," Selene clarifies, and uh oh. "Points for hitting someone, or blowing up something that hits someone. Minus points for getting hit - so Dash has lost, what, two today?"

"One, thank you very much." Dash picks at his sleeve, where a stray shot tore through the fabric. " _You've_ lost two."

Selene shrugs and grins at Claudius. "Two's a good day for me. I usually get hit more."

Claudius studies them for a long moment, and Selene tries not to look like she's holding her breath. He wouldn't be the only one who disapproves of the game, and they probably should have thought twice before mentioning it in earshot. Rigel only rolled his eyes when he heard about it, but Marius frowned so fiercely that they make sure to count score when he isn't with them. They haven't dared bring it up around Brutus at all.

"Not cool, I haven't been counting mine," Claudius says finally, and Selene relaxes infinitesimally. "So it's what, one point per hit?"

Dash nods sagely. "Grenades count for as many as you hit. One-shot kills count for three."

"Grenades are the only reason he's at twenty," Selene points out, unable to help herself. She's not back in the Centre headspace or anything, she's fine, but there's such a thing as professional pride. Dash's bandolier of grenades is half-empty now. "He just chucks bombs at buildings and counts the shrapnel hits at points."

Dash flashes her a challenging grin. "Who's crying now?"

Claudius shakes his head, a long-suffering expression on his face.

Rigel's voice crackles over their earpieces, putting a stop to the impromptu chitchat. "Sitrep, kids?"

"All clear, sir," Selene says, snappy and professional, and Dash rolls his eyes. She shoots him a rude gesture, her voice never betraying her businesslike tone. "Encountering light resistance, nothing we can't handle."

"Roger that. Link up with the right flank and advance on the next block."

"Yessir."

And so it goes. The fight thickens as they get further into town, and - here's the funny thing. Dash is Selene's partner, they complement each other perfectly, but he isn't a killer, not really. Dash doesn't actually enjoy fighting, and he definitely doesn't like killing - no matter what Marius thinks, Selene started the points game for Dash's benefit. She has no problem shooting enemy combatants, but Dash needs the black humour to help him cope with what they're doing.

But Claudius - in Claudius, Selene finds something like a kindred spirit.

Claudius is like Selene. She watches him out the corner of her eye when she can spare a second, and there's no denying that the Victor is _enjoying_ the fight. He's loving every second of shooting at Coin's rebels and he isn't bothering to hide it; the vicious grin on his face only grows as time goes on.

Coin's outfit must have _really_ pissed him off. Then again, bombing the Victors' Village and trying to murder him and his mentor would probably be enough to make it personal for anybody.

He's not doing too badly, either. For all he's relatively inexperienced with guns, he's a decent enough shot, and he has a Victor's situational awareness that means he'll never be a danger to anyone by accident. He even gets to showcase his close-combat chops at one point, when a pair of burly civilians attempts to attack them with crude cudgels, and Claudius is the only one in range. Selene stiffens out of reflex - this is where she lost it, trying to make the switch from guns to hand-to-hand - and sure enough for a second Claudius reaches for his machetes, his hand twitching toward his back, but then he stops, changes tactics, and in minutes he's disarmed both civilians and knocked them out with their own weapons.

And, more impressively, he stayed in his head the whole time, at least as far as Selene can tell. Huh. She'd make a note to ask him about it, if she could ever figure out how to bring it up without it being incredibly awkward.

By the time they're done, their team has managed to clear an entire town of Coin's people and evacuate civilians to safety, all without killing a single Peacekeeper - _and_ Selene kept her head the entire time. Things are looking up.

Of course, the very next day, they're sent in again. And the next, and the next.

The fourth day, the hovercraft drops them off at an inner town, not next to the mountain but close enough that it's got a radio tower and a Peacekeeper garrison. Selene spent most of the pre-mission briefing trying not to - well, "dissociate" would be the word the trainers use, because she knows this place. The Peacekeepers stationed here back in the day were the ones who used to take her hunting, who taught her how to use a rifle and would ruffle her hair and praise her and tell her she's her father's daughter.

A great time for those memories to surface, really, and so Selene misses half the details because she's determinedly stamping down unwanted ghosts. She got through Centre training by compartmentalizing and that's what she's going to do, and by the time they're done Selene has managed to lock everything away in that part of her mind where she puts unpleasant, intrusive thoughts. She has a job to do and that's not helping, and while Dash gives her a quiet glance on the way to the hovercraft, he doesn't push it and she doesn't let on.

Predictably, they're dropped into a firefight. Against Peacekeepers. Peacekeepers who maybe - no. _No_. Selene bites the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood, because the last thing she needs is to lose it _again_ \- but her hands don't shake, and when Rigel's order to fire comes through her earpiece she lifts her rifle, pulls the trigger, and takes out three white-uniformed soldiers without blinking. They fall, and her mind doesn't slide sideways, and it's fine.

It's fine. Everything's fine.

They advance, and Selene stays in the zone. Her heartbeat is fast but steady, and her aim is good and true, her hands moving with precision as she reloads. They take out the loyal Peacekeepers and opposing rebels alike, and it's dangerous work and Selene is hyper-aware of Dash and Claudius at her side, fighting right along with her. It's fine, really, even when she stops worrying about killing her fellow Peacekeepers and starts feeling a frisson of satisfaction with each kill, that's just getting into the swing of things, it's _fine_ -

Then an explosion rocks the building next to them.

Dash swears. "Everyone, get down!"

Another explosion, closer this time, chunks of plaster flying everywhere - one clips Selene's shoulder and sends her reeling, another strikes her on the side of the head -

A masked rebel looms over her. Selene surges to her feet, knocks a grenade out of the woman's hand before she can pull the pin. The woman staggers backwards, clawing for the rifle at her back, but Selene presses her advantage. She grabs the woman's wrist and _twists_ \- the woman screams - follows it up with a hard blow to the throat that crushes her windpipe -

There's a flicker of movement in a nearby doorway, and Selene spins and lashes out with her foot. The second rebel falls back, and Selene follows up by shooting him in the head with her sidearm. His skull explodes in a mess of bone and blood - it hits her in a warm, wet spray she remembers all too well - then there's a yell and a third rebel appears. Selene whirls and fires, catching him in the throat.

Hot, vicious satisfaction surges through her. Attack her, will they? She'll show them - she's the one to watch, she can take them all, they'll see, everyone will be watching her now -

She fires again, through the heart to make sure, then rounds on her next target -

Claudius stands in front of her, palms out. Selene blinks, wavers, tries to pull herself back. (It's hard to pull back - for a second she doesn't want to, until she remembers.) "Hey," he says, calm and even, as if addressing a wild animal. (She is a wild animal.) "Hey, you got them."

"Uh." Selene wets her lips. She wants to drop her rifle, throw it away from her and scramble back, like those soon-to-be washout kids in Transition the first time their blades tasted blood and they couldn't handle it. She wants to cling to it and never let go. "I -"

"You got them," Claudius repeats, and something clicks in her head. Selene exhales, nodding a little. "They're all dead. Put the gun down."

"Yeah." Mechanically, Selene shoulders her pistol. "Is Dash -"

"Fine," Dash groans. Selene turns to see him struggling to his feet, using the wall as leverage. "'m fine."

"No you're not!" Selene bursts out, alarmed. The right side of his face is a mess of blood, his hair matted to his scalp, and that shocks her back to reality more than anything else.

"Head wounds always bleed the most," Claudius reminds her, still calm. He sounds almost like a trainer. "Still, sit down and we'll put a bandage on it."

Dash, it turns out, is rather less than fine. He's got a decently bad concussion, and shrapnel peppers his right arm and back, as well as the fine grains embedded in his cheek. He's not the only one, either. One rebel trooper has a badly torn leg and another is bleeding from shrapnel, and rather than press on Claudius calls for an evac.

Nobody thought to question him, Selene realizes absently, after he puts the comm away. Must be a Victor thing.

With evac en route, the rest of the rebels play field medic while they wait. Selene takes a seat rather than fuss over Dash when she can't actually help, and she can't say she's surprised when Claudius sits down next to her. "Has that ever happened before?" he asks in a low voice.

"Has what?" Selene shouldn't play stupid, but she tells herself it's because of Dash, who's blinking sleepily, swimming in and out of consciousness as one of the rebels tries to keep him awake by asking him to name as many types of fish as he can.

"That's a stereotype," Dash mumbles, rolling eyes with pupils blown wide.

"Just name the fish, Four," says the rebel, poking him in his good shoulder.

 _So much for the bet_ , Selene thinks. She comes back to find Claudius still staring at her, his face pinched.

"Don't pull that shit with me," Claudius says. To his credit he doesn't snap it or anything, but even Selene, who happily mouthed off to trainers her entire time at the Centre, knows better than to try again. "I know a berserker snap when I see one. Has it happened before?"

Selene glances around at the others, but Claudius kept his voice down and no one else seems to have heard. "Yes," she says reluctantly.

"For how long?"

"Only recently. Since the war started." Selene grimaces. "Look, I already got the lecture from Marius. Keep your head, don't get carried away, I'm working on it."

Claudius pulls a face right back, which between the blood and his sharp features looks far less petulant and a lot more scary. "You really think I'm going to give you a lecture? I was going to say, I know what that feels like. Used to happen to me a lot when I was younger. Remember what I said, about that first kid I killed in Residential, when I was eleven? It's like the world disappears, and then it comes back and there's a body on the floor. Am I right?"

"I - little bit, yeah." Selene agrees warily. And the thing is, she could say yes, accept his sympathy or whatever this is and move on, but - she saw him. He fought people hand to hand and didn't twitch, and he actually went into the Arena. By all rights he should be crazier than she is. She takes a deep breath and makes the jump. "But not exactly. The world didn't - doesn't - disappear. I know exactly what I'm doing. It's more like ... I forget where I am."

Claudius tilts his head. "Where do you think you are?"

Selene doesn't answer. The words press at the back of her throat, thick and choking. She folds the strap of her rifle over in her hands, twisting the stiff fabric around her palm.

"Look," Claudius says. "You don't have to talk to me if you don't want to, and I'm not going to rat you out to anyone. But if this has been going on for awhile, you need to talk to someone, because trust me, it's only going to get worse."

Well, shit.

"I think I'm back at the Centre." Selene says tiredly, scrubbing a hand over her face. Maybe he'll understand, maybe he won't, but he's right about one thing. Pretending everything's fine clearly isn't going to work, and neither is friendly sparring matches with Dash in the training room. "It's like - I don't know. I forget I'm not supposed to enjoy it anymore and then I get carried away. It never used to be a problem! They trained us out of the whole 'wanting to kill people' thing when I left the Centre, but I guess it didn't take."

"Hm," Claudius says, whatever that means. "How long were you in?"

Selene looks over the ruined street, fighting down a splash of pride even as the drumroll of danger sounds in the distance. "Until eighteen."

His gaze is measuring, even in her peripheral vision. "What year?"

"Is that relevant?"

"It is now, yeah."

Shit. Wrong answer, apparently. Finally Selene gives up; he's probably already guessed, or at least suspected, or he wouldn't have asked, and it's clear he's going to push until she tells him. And if she doesn't he'll ask Dash, and Dash will try to protect her and that will only make things worse. "72," Selene says, hands tightening on her knees. "Petra's year. I was the backup, okay?"

After all that, it feels - anticlimactic, almost. Nothing explodes, nothing shakes, nobody bursts from the ground with cameras or screams in shock. Claudius lets out a quiet hiss of air but otherwise doesn't react. "Did you go straight from the Centre to the Peacekeepers?"

"I had a detour through the detox dorms first," Selene says, shrugging. She still feels a little lightheaded, or like she should feel different, somehow. "But pretty much. Like I said, they train us out of everything pretty well. They've had a lot of practice. You can't have Peacekeepers snapping and killing people for fun."

"Have you watched the news?" Claudius asks dryly, and Selene flinches. "I wouldn't be so sure about that. But look, no, this isn't a problem with the Academy - not exactly. You said this only started recently. Right?"

"Right, but so?" Selene frowns at him. "What's your point?"

"I mean, you weren't flashing back to the Centre when you were in the Academy, or they would have trained you out of it. And you said you weren't doing this sort of thing in Residential, either, so it wouldn't be in your file as a look-for."

Selene frowns. "In Residential they used to yell at me for excessive force or for ignoring stop orders, but I always knew what I was doing and where I was. I never had blackouts. So - I guess not."

Claudius grins, only Selene can't figure out for the life of her what he could possibly find to be positive about. "Lucky for you, you're talking to someone with lots of experience in slipping sideways and thinking he's somewhere else. You're basically living the first year of my recovery. And I might not have been at war, but I did learn to fight again after, and they did train it out of me."

Selene looks at him, really looks. Claudius holds her gaze unwaveringly. She swallows, and the knot in her chest unloosens, maybe, just a little. "Can you teach me?"

"For sure," Claudius says, and he reaches over to clasp her shoulder and give her a little shake. The comms chirp, and he wrinkles his nose in a theatrical grimace. "But for now, the evac's here."

They help load the wounded onto the hovercraft, and Selene gives her report, and then it's debriefs and getting checked out by the medics and waiting for Marius and Rigel to get back to start the debrief process all over again. A small part of her thinks that's actually going to be it, a nice gesture on Claudius' part but nothing more, except that night after supper he stops by and jerks his thumb toward the door.

"C'mon," he says. "I've cleared us some private time in one of the workout rooms, just the two of us. Time for some Victor detox training."

Selene lets out a slow breath and tries to calm the flutters in her chest. "Yeah, except I've never been in the Arena."

Claudius stops, gives her a serious look and waves a hand, the gesture encompassing not just the hallway they're standing in but somehow _everything_. "Look around you," he says. "Where do you think you've been?"

He heads off again, leaving Selene to process that on her own. She opens her mouth, closes it, then gives up and jogs off after him.

* * *

When Lyme brought Claudius with her to fight the Capitol, he wasn't supposed to actually _fight_ the Capitol. She always pictured it as an ideological rebellion, waging war from a safe distance, using his mind and his sharp observation skills and talent for making political observations that used to terrify her back in the Village to - well, she didn't know, honestly. She'd never really thought that far ahead.

Whatever Lyme imagined when she pictured the two of them running away together, it definitely had not been Claudius strapping a pair of machetes to his back, slinging an assault rifle over his shoulder, and gearing up with no more protection than a helmet and heavy vest before heading into combat for days on end.

"I'm not sure what you expect him to do," Nero says, the first time Claudius heads out with his new friends and leaves Lyme behind to chew off her own fists. "He's not a people person, he's not gonna be making any new friends trying to recruit anybody. Most of the Victors in the hospital remember him as the one who killed all those twelve-year-olds, so he wouldn't be a comforting bedside presence. He's found kids his age and a place to do some good, finally. Of course he's gonna take it."

Lyme runs a hand through her hair and pulls until the pain spikes through her scalp, sharp and grounding. "I didn't say I don't understand why," she snaps, and Nero chuckles in wry sympathy. "I just - did he have to find a way to help that involves getting shot at? I almost lost him back in those tunnels. Every time I close my eyes - it's all I can think about."

Nero sighs, and he loops an arm around her shoulders. "I hate to say this, honey, but it's probably a little bit of payback," he says. "How many times did he have to watch you running up against that mountain? You were on active duty for weeks and nothing he could do about it. A little late for you to start tutting about playing it safe now."

Lyme glares at him, but Nero doesn't flinch, much too used to her by now after all those tantrums and childish displays of temper during her early recovery. "I feel like that's unfair," she says finally. "I'm the mentor. I'm the one who's supposed to take the risks."

Nero pats her arm in consolation. "And here you thought he'd never get over his attachment issues," he jokes.

Lyme laughs, a sharp, ugly bark of a sound, but then it keeps going, a little too wild and a little too long - and then it breaks, cracks, turns into something else, and Nero isn't teasing anymore. He draws her in against his chest, shields her from the rest of the room, empty though it is, as Lyme cries in shame and fury and raw, helpless humiliation.

"For what it's worth," Nero says quietly, resting his chin on top of her head, "I watched every broadcast they aired of you taking on that mountain. Heart in my fucking throat every damn time. Couldn't make myself care who won, either way seemed like two sides of a shitty coin, but - I needed to see you were still out there, still fighting. Scared the shit out of me every time I saw you up there. But you made it, and so will he."

As much as Lyme wants to let herself relax into the comfort of Nero's mentor surety, the truth is that they're at war, and they've been incredibly lucky so far. It feels like thumbing her nose at the Gamemakers to stop worrying and trust that everything will be fine. But there's nothing she can do about it here, and so Lyme sits up, scrubs a hand over her face, ignores the decades-old urge to push up her sleeves and dig her fingernails into the soft skin of her wrists, and heads out to find something useful she can do.

As it turns out, that chance comes sooner rather than later. Claudius and his squad are off fighting in one of the inner towns when Lyme and the other Victors get called in for a meeting by a handful of exhausted-looking rebels. "We're hoping one of you can help identify someone," says the woman in charge, queuing up a video and throwing it up on the projector screen. It's rough footage, grainy and shaky, but Lyme makes out what appears to be a mix of civilians and off-duty Peacekeepers - uniformed and armed but no armour or helmets - fighting against a cadre of Coin's rebels. The leaders are a man and a woman, both dark-haired and handsome in that irritatingly District 2 sort of way, who look to be in their fifties or sixties but are clearly still going strong, as they take out soldier after soldier without so much as flinching. Somewhere across the room Artemisia swallows the ghost of an inappropriate laugh as the rebels back off to regroup.

The video pauses on the militia leaders, and the rebel woman - Sienna, Lyme thinks belatedly - folds her arms. "Coin's rebels have encountered resistance from one of the Peacekeeper towns," she says, in a masterful use of understatement. "From what we can tell, this community holds a number of retired or second-twenty Peacekeeper families. These two appear to have convinced a number of them to form a militia."

Lyme grimaces. "I warned them. I told them to stay away from the Peacekeeper communities, I said this is exactly what would happen if they tried. I guess the victory at Eagle Pass made them cocky."

"Well, now we're hoping we can turn this to our advantage," Sienna says. "As far as Coin's rebellion is concerned, these people are a lost cause. You told her this yourself. But we have something they don't."

Devon sits up straight. "You're talking about us."

She smiles. "Indeed. If we can convince even some of these people to come round to our cause, that will mean a great deal to getting the district on our side. And even if we can't - if we can get them to stop fighting, we can evacuate the civilians and get them to safety before the rebels decide to cut their losses and send in another fleet of bombers."

District 1 fell to the rebels right after District 8, and the people - divided by caste and a class system as stratified as the Capitol versus the rest of the districts, between those who wanted to be the Capitol and those who starved and suffered and worked themselves in poverty to support that lifestyle - joined the rebels and tore apart every remnant of the Capitol within its borders. The District 1 Athletics Academy, which lured pretty children from their parents with promises of riches and a better life and stole them if the promises didn't work, was the first casualty of war. To the surprise of many, the rebels included, Capitol's pampered lapdog was one of the first to turn on their master.

But District 2 continues to be complicated, and anything they can do to help reduce the bloodshed, the better. The assault on District 1's Academy left no survivors, the children it had taken apparently an acceptable sacrifice in such terrible times, and Lyme sickens at the thought of the same thing happening here in Two. She kept the rebels away from the Centre as long as possible, but they need to make the people stop, quell the uprisings, get the civilians safe, and draw the rebels out of Two and back to the Capitol where they belong.

"You want us to identify the leaders?" Devon says, leaning forward and frowning at the blurred image. "Can you get a clearer shot?"

Sierra plays with the video a little, inching it back and forth frame by frame until she's finally able to freeze it on a relatively clear shot of the leaders' faces. "That's as good as we can make it," she says. "We can't exactly waltz into town and look at local housing records."

"No need," say Devon and Brutus at the same time. They stop, look at each other, and share a brief grin, then Devon waves Brutus on.

"That's Commander Joseph and Sergeant Adora Seward," Brutus says. Emory nods, and Adessa and a few of the others make quiet sounds of recognition. Lyme has not felt like such a poor excuse for a patriot in a long time. "The Sewards have been Peacekeepers as long as there are Peacekeepers," Brutus continues. "Usually run into them at the annual Peacekeeper Gala, plus they've won the Tour lottery a few times. Petra likes him," he adds, almost as an afterthought. "He never treated her like she was broken."

"Their son died in the Games a few years back," Devon adds, delicately. "He was yours, Calli."

Everyone goes silent, though nobody turns to look at her. Lyme frantically runs through the math, trying to remember the last year that Callista mentored, before - "Creed," Callista says, crisp and collected but with an undercurrent of softness, strange and terrifying coming from her. "You're right, those are his parents. They came to the field to see him interred, with their other son."

"Alec," Lyme bursts out as the pieces finally click. This time everyone turns to stare. "Alec, their other son is - he's a doctor, small practice down below the mountain. I used to - before, when I was - I would bring our soldiers to him, if they got hurt too badly and I couldn't risk bringing them back to base. He didn't flip but he didn't turn us in, either. Maybe now we could convince him."

Sierra's eyes light up. "If you have a connection with their son, maybe we can use that. Family is important in Two, the more relationships we can build, the better."

"The last time I saw him we didn't exactly leave on good terms," Lyme warns. That's a polite way of saying the boy all but called Lyme a traitor to her face, but at the same time, she'd seen the cracks, and she knew how to recognize an argument made on principle rather than true conviction. It might not take much to turn him now. Not as one of Coin's rebels - not after the bombing, no, never - but maybe now ... if he knew there was another way ...

"There's something else about the man," Hera says. Lyme blinks, glancing at her in surprise. "Not her, just him. Something - familiar about his face. Doesn't anyone else see it?"

"I can't say that I do," Adessa says. "He looks rather like a recruitment poster, if that's what you mean."

"No, I see it too," Emory says slowly. "But - not him now, right? Younger."

"Yes, that's it, much younger," Hera says, leaping on the information like an enthusiastic trainee on their favourite weapon. "Reaping age, in fact. Come on, think, picture him without the grey and the lines, but keep the uniform. Help me out, someone has to know. Devon, you're the one with the magic memory, can't you place it?"

Devon spreads his hands, confusion writ across his face. "I'm sorry, I've got nothing. Mish?"

"Nah, same," Artemisia says. "I have no idea what's going on."

"Wait, no, now I think I see what you're talking about," says Nero, at the same time that Callista narrows her eyes, and Brutus says, "Hang on -"

Lyme looks between them - all Victors in Residential between the 30th and the 50th Hunger Games but no one before or after - and suddenly it hits. "Oh holy _fuck_ ," she says aloud. "It's the bogeyman."

"Ho-ly shit." Brutus lets out a low whistle. "I'd never thought about it before, but you're abso-fuckin-lutely right."

"The _what_?" Devon bursts out. "Will someone tell me what is going on?"

"Child, once someone informs _me_ I will be glad to share," Adessa says with crisp asperity.

Lyme exhales. Every year for twenty years, following the disastrous Volunteer-who-choked at the 30th Games and ending after the Second Quarter Quell, each new crop of thirteens who passed their Residential exam would get trotted into the main activity room to watch the traitor be cuffed, beaten, and executed as a warning to anyone who might ever consider making it through training without the intent to follow through. While the blank-faced eighteen-year-old getting black-bagged and shot in the head had obviously been the worst part, one of the awful highlights of the video had been the moment where the first trainee - wide-eyed, clearly terrified, but under orders - had broken ranks with his peers and driven his boot into the side of his classmate's head.

They never told the trainees the traitor's name, or the names of any of his classmates, including the first boy who started the mass beating. Now, thanks to Hera and the power of collective memory, one of Residential's greatest long-running mysteries has been solved.

Lyme lets Nero explain this one, and she sits back and studies the images frozen in projection. The parents of a dead tribute and a boy who refused to turn despite his brother's needless death - a Peacekeeper who was once a frightened tribute trainee who engaged in the brutal, bloody beating of his classmate and sat in silence and watched three officers empty their bullets into his skull - maybe convincing them to join the cause won't be as easy as they hoped.

 _This_ is _District 2_ , Lyme thinks, and fights back another ugly ribbon of laughter. _Home sweet home_.

* * *

"The leader's name is Joseph Seward," Marius says, and everything goes blank.

Not completely, of course, Selene is too much of a professional for that. She flickers for a second, a loud humming drowning out everything in her head, but then she forces herself to compartmentalize to make it through the meeting without a hitch. It means that later she'll be able to recall the details of the briefing no problem, even though right now every time Marius says "Joseph Seward" all Selene can think is _Uncle Joe_.

She knew it was coming. They've been getting closer and closer to Selene's hometown each time they head out to fight, and there's no way that Uncle Joe and Aunt Dora would ever let anyone take District 2 without a fight. Honestly, Selene is just glad to hear they weren't at Eagle Pass when it fell; neither of them work night shifts anymore, but it wouldn't have been out of character for either of them to hare up the hill with their personal sidearms and decide to take on the rebels single-handedly.

Forming a militia with the local neighbourhood watch seems about right, really. Selene would laugh if she could breathe around the fist squeezing her lungs.

Marius finishes the briefing, which includes the plan - their squad is to stay back and facilitate civilian evacuation after the Victors hopefully work their magic and convince the militia to stand down - as well as a quick profile based on whatever information he, Rigel and the other Victors have managed to gather on Joseph and Adora Seward.

"It's not much to go on, but we're working with what we have," Rigel says, looking skeptical. "Honestly, this one doesn't look good. We have no reason to believe they'll lay down their weapons, and certainly not for the cause. Our best hope is that someone can convince them that more death and bloodshed is not the way to go. They have no reason to trust us, and unless Lyme can convince their son to join us, we have no way to give them one."

Selene keeps her face impassive. She could speak up, tell Marius and Rigel that Commander Joseph Seward is basically her uncle, that her memories of him are sharper and less complicated than those of her own mother, but what good would it do? The Selene he remembers is a little girl, young and enthusiastic about the Program and Enobaria and growing up to be a Victor or a Peacekeeper like her father. It won't help anything for him to find out his beloved niece is a traitor now, and Selene's memories, while warm and pleasant, are definitely not filled with all the times when Uncle Joe changed his mind.

Very likely he'd look at her and see all the things Selene's afraid to find if she looks in the mirror, everything she fears she is when she raises her rifle and fires on one of her own people without hesitation. He definitely wouldn't look at her and see the girl who used to sit on his knee and make puppy eyes at him for extra cookies before dinner.

He'd look at her and see a traitor. He'd look at the rebellion and see one more thing he loved taken away from him.

No, it would not help at all for Selene to be the one to try to convince him. If it were her own father leading the militia then _maybe_ she might have a chance, but Rigel plays the footage and Selene manages to look for him without anyone catching on and he isn't part of the fighting. Whether because of his old injury, whether because he has another kid at home to protect, Selene isn't letting herself think about this. Her father isn't fighting, and Uncle Joe wouldn't listen to her, and it's best for everyone if she keeps quiet. The fewer liabilities, the better.

Of course, if Lyme does manage to convince Alec to join and he sees Selene then it's all over, so Selene secretly vows to place herself as far away from her childhood friend as possible.

Everything is terrible. This was so much easier when all they had to do was sneak around and steal things.

"Hey," Claudius says, catching up with her as she leaves the room after the briefing. "You okay?"

"I'm fine," Selene says smoothly. Maybe a little too smooth, because Claudius' eyes narrow a fraction, but he doesn't push it. "This whole thing is getting too messy for me, that's all. Home turf and all that. I'll be glad once we're out of Two and don't need to worry so much about friendly fire."

"I'm with you there." He pushes a hand through his hair, which has started to grow out a bit from its military-short buzz cut. "You wanna come throw down with me for a bit? You look like you need to blow off some steam, and I definitely do. All this talk about the Victors being the last hope and inspiration and everything is starting to psyche me out."

Selene gives him a suspicious look, but if this is some kind of secret therapy session, he's very good at pretending it isn't. Besides, he's not wrong about her mood, and sparring with Dash is fun but Selene is also feeling a bit - off, and she'd really rather not worry about losing control for a second and hurting him. He still hasn't recovered from his concussion and needs to take it easy a little while longer. At least with a Victor five years older that's not going to be a concern. "Yeah, why not," she says, doing her best to hide the relief. "No knives today, though, I kinda feel like punching."

"Punching it is," Claudius says, in a grand voice like he's making some kind of magnanimous gesture, and in spite of everything Selene can't help but laugh.

* * *

"I am not looking forward to this," Lyme mutters, as they come up toward the small house with its plain wood siding and white trim, the walk-up porch and worn fence with a fresh coat of paint that Brutus would bet his monthly Victor stipend was done by grateful neighbours. "You can laugh, you've never had your principles flung in your face by a self-righteous twenty-year-old when you've been spending every day wondering whether you're doing the right thing."

"Nobody was laughing," Brutus points out. Fewer opponents are more formidable than a young kid just past their Reaping who thinks they know everything, especially in Two. Brutus can only imagine how those conversations went. "It's fine, you've got this."

Lyme shoots him a dirty look, her face a pale smear in the moonlight. "I don't know why they're sending me at all. They should just let you do all of this and have me stay out of it, I'm sure that would work better."

Brutus snorts. "Research says the dramatic reveal is more effective," he says. "I can't believe I've done this enough time there's - what's the Three word? - _data_ for it."

This time she grins a little and knocks their shoulders together. "Don't worry, caveman, soon everything will be back to normal and nobody will give a shit about you being alive anymore. Just like old times."

"Thanks so much," Brutus says, punching her in the arm, but then they're at the house and he cuts it out before they ruin the effect by waking the kid with their bickering. He chooses a dark corner against the wall, out of range of the orange glow cast by the porch light, and waits while Lyme raps on the front door.

The kid opens the door in his clothes, way too fast to have gotten dressed, which means he must have slept in them. Most quarry doctors do, in case of late-night accidents, but the funny thing is that the mine's been closed since the bombing so this is habit more than anything else. Brutus takes him in, the mussed hair and dark, shadowed eyes, and he doesn't look much like the Commander in the videos until he takes in the visitor at his door and his expression hardens.

 _Ah_ , Brutus thinks. _There he is_.

"I thought you were dead," says Alec Seward in a measured voice. "Pretty sure that's the official story."

"I'm hard to kill," Lyme says, matching his tone. "Look, I'm not here for a repeat of the old game. We need -"

"Did you know?" He cuts her off, words sharp as knives and heavy as a blow from a mace. Brutus, safe from his vantage point, allows himself the wince that Lyme can't. Leaving one tunnel open for the miners and risking her life to help the trapped civilians escape is not going to win her absolution in the face of so many other deaths.

Lyme exhales. "Alec -"

"Did — you — know?" He waits, and when Lyme doesn't answer, he hisses out a long breath, sucks it back in through his teeth and shakes his head. "No. Whatever it is, I don't care, we're done. Take your speech, take your promises, take your twisted _fucking_ ideals and get off my property. Next time I see you I'm calling the Peacekeepers."

He goes to shut the door in her face - not slam, still polite even when he's fucking pissed - but Lyme shoves her foot in the gap just in time. "I'm trying to save your father," she says, and the kid freezes. "I'm sure you've seen the news. He's going to get himself killed, or arrested and then killed, whichever comes first. We're trying to get him to stand down before that happens."

"You know what," Alec says, his voice shaking at the edges, and uh oh. Brutus has seen this before, tributes who last three weeks before the Arena finally takes its toll. "I've had enough. I have a lot of respect for you, really I do, and even after everything I mourned your death, but this? You already tried my dead brother, now you're using my _father_ against me? I can't believe I'm saying this, but _fuck you_ , Lyme. After everything you've done, you want me to believe that those people are going to just let him walk away if he puts his weapons down?"

"No, I think Coin's people are going to keep him alive until they can make an example of him on live television," Lyme says grimly, and now it's Alec's turn to flinch. "But the people I'm with have something else in mind."

To his credit, the kid stops before launching into a new tirade. "What? What are you talking about?"

Lyme glances over, and Brutus slides off the railing. "Time for the dramatic reveal," he says, and he should probably not make light of it at a time like this, but his coping mechanisms involve either dark humour or alcohol, and the rebellion is all out of booze. "Hey, kid," he says. "Do you have time to talk about the Second Rebellion?"

Alec staggers against the doorway, but catches himself before his legs give out. "Hang on one second," he says, his voice a little higher than usual but otherwise keeping it together not too badly. "I have some moonshine I use as backup anaesthetic that's about to make good on its double-duty." He turns, pauses, waves vaguely at them. "Come on in, make yourselves at home, I guess."

Lyme shakes her head as Brutus closes the door behind him. "I told you I should have stayed home," she says under her breath.

Brutus punches her shoulder. "You're doing great," he reassures her, only a little bit forced, and they follow the kid into the house.

All told, it doesn't take that much to get him to change his mind. The kid's furious at the rebellion for the bombing, wracked with guilt over being complicit when he could have said something earlier, but he ain't happy with the Capitol either. He's never been a loyalist like his parents, not even like his brother, and it started back before he watched his brother bleed our for hours on live television. Just as they'd hoped, having an option that isn't Coin's rebels and isn't the Capitol gives him a lifeline that eases some of the tension from his shoulders, though the kid has seen too much death, too much bad luck, to allow much hope.

"I can't promise my being there will do much," Alec says. He tugs at his sleep-rumpled hair and makes a face. "I guess your intel wouldn't have this, but my parents and I don't talk anymore. They cut me off - and I walked out, I won't pretend it wasn't mutual - when I didn't want to be a Peacekeeper."

Lyme says nothing, but Brutus can't help it. He frowns, looks around the combined home/doctor's office, obviously handed down over several generations. "Doctor's a good profession," he says. "Ain't no shame in that."

Alec's mouth quirks a little. "Thanks for that," he says with a hint of wry humour. "I don't think it was really about me being a doctor. He'd lost my brother, and I'd been lying to him, and - I don't know. Neither of us handled it well. And then I flung a few other things in his face, and he didn't take _that_ well either, so I left and I never came back. Honestly, having me with you might make him start shooting."

He's kidding, mostly, but not entirely, and Brutus just feels tired. They should be leaving this kid alone, not dragging him back into painful family drama, but if they have any hope of ending this conflict without more blood and death, this is their best shot. He doesn't need to look at Lyme to know the look on her face, to know she's two seconds away from walking out of here and saying _fuck this_ altogether. Her fingers are leaving indents on her biceps already.

"Don't underestimate the power of regret," Brutus says finally. "Nobody's expecting you to hug it out on the battlefield. All we need is one of them to put the guns down long enough for us to talk, that's it."

Alec sighs, then drags a hand down his face. "Yeah, fine, okay," he says. "I mean, they can't disown me twice, right?"

"That's the spirit," Brutus says, and Alec gives him a baleful look that turns into a soft snort of laughter.

* * *

Brutus' first thought about the militia is that he'd love to meet whoever's in charge of their supply chain, because they're holed up real good. Food, weapons, basic field medicine, it's clear that any attempt at trying to wait them out will be pointless. Too bad they're on the other side, the rebellion could really use people that good at shaking down supplies.

His next thought, though, is a hard jolt, because even without Devon's magic memory for faces, Brutus looks across the crowd of soldiers peering above the top of the makeshift barricade and recognizes half of them. Not only the Peacekeepers couples themselves but also the scattering of civilian husbands and wives, familiar from a dozen Peacekeeper galas or fundraising events, Victory Tour lotteries or other Program-related gatherings. Most of them he knows through Petra, whose grassroots efforts in Two over the past few years have been almost entirely Peacekeeper-related.

They haven't noticed him yet. The Victors are in a line behind the Second Rebellion soldiers, with Rigel's squad guarding the rear, waiting to handle the civilian evac. The Scouts have been quiet, and Brutus doesn't need to ask how they're feeling. At least they're all too young to have former colleagues among the retired and second-twenty Peacekeepers forming the militia.

Alec stands next to him, hands splayed at his sides in the old Centre trick to combat sweaty palms. "This is a terrible idea," he says in a low voice. "But too late now."

"You got this, kid," Brutus says, laying a hand on the back of the boy's neck like he used to do with Devon when he panicked. Alec lets out a long breath and settles, squaring his shoulders and straightening his spine.

To their credit, the militia didn't immediately open fire when the rebels approached, weapons shouldered, under a flag of parley. They weren't naive enough to leave their barricade, either, but at least no one had to shoot their way in. Their leader raises himself up head and shoulders above the barricade, hands pressed flat. Brutus tries very hard not to imagine him at eighteen, kicking his classmate to the ground, but it's hard not to with the hard light of fanaticism in his eyes.

"We're not interested in your terms," Joseph Seward calls out. "Leave our district and the fighting will stop, but not before."

The rebel commander doesn't bother to argue. She nods, and the rebel lines split down the middle and move to the side, giving way to reveal Alec in the centre, flanked by the line of District 2 Victors. A ripple of surprise runs through the assembled militia, including Commander Seward, but a moment later his expression hardens.

"Alec," he says, neutral.

"Dad," Alec says to match. "I'm here to ask you to put your weapons down. Let these people evacuate the town, get everyone to safety. The quarry towns have already joined the rebels of their own free choice. More fighting only means more people will die."

"You mean like at Eagle Pass," Commander Seward says. "Good men and women died in that mountain because these rebels thought it more convenient -"

"I know, I was _there_ ," Alec snaps. "I went in when I heard the explosion and I bullied them into letting me past the blockade and I spent all night pulling people out of the mountain and putting them back together. I spent the next two weeks digging survivors out and trying to stop the bleeding. So don't lecture _me_ about -" He stops, nostrils flaring, and takes a deep breath. "These aren't those people. The rebels aren't a monolith, there are factions, just like anywhere. They have Peacekeepers, our Peacekeepers. They saved Brutus from the Arena, they saved Enobaria from Capitol interrogators, they saved our other Victors from the Village bombing. They want to help save the district. But they can't do that if you and Mom and Uncle Ramon and all the rest of you are determined to go down with Two."

Commander Seward clenches his jaw. "And what, exactly, do you propose we do?"

This time it's Callista who steps forward, Callista who refused to fight for the rebels or aid in the cause because she can't make herself turn on the Capitol. Callista who mentored the Sewards' son in the Arena and tossed seeds on his grave after the undertakers lowered him into the ground. Brutus holds his breath.

Joseph Seward turns pale. Beside him, his wife scrambles up to join him at the barricade, eyes wide. "Callista -" Adora Seward says, choked and almost reverent. Joseph's eyes are traitorously bright.

"Of course you want to fight," Callista says, clipping the words like a mutt tearing flesh from bone. "This is our district, our home. You gave your son to the Arena for the love of it, and he sacrificed his life so its children could be safe. And those - _invaders_ \- they come and they trample the ground with their unworthy boots and think they have the right."

Brutus exchanges a nervous glance with Lyme, who shakes her head. _Wait_ , she signs, flicking her fingers in mentor-signal, and there's nothing else to do and so he does.

"But." Callista raises her head. "There is nothing that woman would love more than an excuse to come in with her hovercrafts and her bombs and raze us to the ground. We're animals to her, and she is looking for an excuse to treat us like animals. See what they did to the Athletics Academy in District 1. Right now they're content to lock our children in the Centre and wait, but do you think they'll be patient forever if the rest of the district is in uprising? How much do you think they'll tolerate before they decide to punish you by dropping a bomb on the Residential building?"

They flinch, and Callista waves a hand at the silent wall of rebels behind her. "I'm not asking you to change sides. What I'm asking you to do is make the choice that will save lives. We sacrificed our children for seventy-five years so our people could live in peace. All you have to do is put down your weapons. The district has fallen. We need her alive to rebuild when this is over."

"Dad," Alec says, the professional demeanour cracking for the first time. "Please."

"Joseph, you can't possibly -" says Adora Seward sharply, but then she looks back at the Victors - at her son - and something in her expression breaks. "Alec, are you well?"

Alec swallows, hands curling into fists at his sides. "Yeah, Mom. Doing great. I just want this to be over."

Adora laughs, bleak and humourless, and runs a hand across her face. "Don't we all," she says, then turns to her husband. "Joseph?"

"This would not be a surrender," Commander Seward says, his voice a warning. "I am not giving my men up to be arrested and imprisoned. This is a civilian evacuation in exchange for their safety. Is that clear?"

Alec turns to the rebel commander, who nods. "Agreed," she says. "If you disarm now and come with us, that's the end of it. No charges, no arrests, we take you to safety and that's it. I can't promise that Coin's outfit will make you the same deal when they come back.

Joseph pauses, then nods once, sharp and decisive. "Soldiers, weapons down," he calls out, and Brutus wonders what the rebels think when every one of the militia step back and set their guns on the ground.

Behind him Brutus hears Selene stop one of the rebel officers, saying, "Make sure you evac medical people to look after the wounded, otherwise they'll probably insist on staying behind." A good point, and he wonders how a Junior Peacekeeper came to think of it, but then she disappears and he doesn't get the chance to ask.

Alec sags, and Brutus reaches over to clap his shoulder. "Good work, kid," he says. "You got them."

"I think Callista got them more than me," Alec says, looking over at her with open admiration and not a little awe. "But - yeah. Even if they never speak to me again, I'd rather they not be dead."

"Well, now a whole lot of people are gonna not be dead," Brutus reminds him. "There will be time for philosophical discussion after this is over." The war has spread, and Beetee's updates have made it clear that Coin's forces are spreading thin. They want to finish in Two as soon as possible so they can start their assault on the Capitol full-force. With the militias out of the way, that leaves District 2 safely in rebel hands with no more bloodshed on the horizon.

"Let's hope so," the kid says, but then one of the rebels leads him away to join the evac and that's the end of the conversation.

With the rebels the Scouts handling the evacuation, the Victors head back and wait for the hovercraft. Brutus takes a moment to look around, the peaceful country community scarred by gunfire and shrapnel, posts torn up to erect hasty barricades, the ground a mess of hundreds of bootprints and indentations from fallen bodies, and exhales.

"We did it," he says to no one and everyone in particular. "We did what we came for. We saved the district."

"Next stop, the Capitol," Claudius says, with not a little relish. He reaches over and takes Lyme's hand, lacing their fingers and holding on with a steady grip. "No pressure or anything."

"No pressure at all," Lyme says, her eyes hard. "I've been looking forward to this one."


	10. Chapter 10

President Snow is a liar.

The thought nags at Petra like a muttation tearing flesh and sinew away from bone, refusing to back away from a corpse so the hovercrafts can carry it away. The Capitol used to be Petra's favourite place — not the parties with the crowds and the people with their too-wide smiles and their hands that slid to her waist and groped at her when Brutus wasn't looking, no, but here, the President's mansion, had always been a place of refuge. The home of the President, their leader, the man Petra had fought and trained and risked her life for, the one who'd looked at her and seen the person she tried so hard to be when even Petra lost faith in herself.

She'd thought — it's stupid, childish, _babyish_ , even, she all but chokes on it, sour and bile and rotting in her throat — that she was safe here. Petra hadn't been completely naive, she knew she had to play a role, knew the value of telling their glorious leader what he needed to hear, but she'd never had to _act_ with him. The reason she loved the President was that she meant every single word of what she said. Everything he'd asked, she'd been willing to give, and more.

Petra heard the whispers about District 1, of course. The trainers warned them about having sex in the Arena, about making that the centre of their persona, said that was for District 1, not them — never them — and that they'd have to pay it back in the end. And like anything else in Residential, there were always older trainees to tell the wide-eyed, breathless initiates what the trainers really meant.

Petra knew when Brutus told her that the saner tribute from Two always tried to take out the girls from One in the split if they could help it, and it would be up to her if Marco couldn't get it done. She knew Ambrosia didn't want to win that night in the Arena when the girl from One bared her throat and said _I'm going to kill you_ with eyes that begged the opposite — knew when Petra worked her over and she lost every ounce of the coy, slinking, for-the-cameras seduction and tore at Petra's hips and back with chipped fingernails, voice raw and rasping and ugly with the kind of desire girls are never allowed to have in public. And so Petra broke the rules, leaned in close and hissed _If I had a knife I'd kill you now, I'm sorry, I'm sorry —_ as Ambrosia came with a ragged shout.

Except she had wanted to win in the end, hadn't she — Petra had seen it in her face, the sneer when Petra thought she'd won, and she'd swung her mace and shattered Petra's leg and she'd meant it, so whatever the price for surviving, all those days on her own had made Ambrosia willing to pay for it. And so Petra had thought … well, maybe it was just stories, something they told tributes to help them sleep at night, make them feel better about killing fellow Careers who'd trained as hard as they did. It could even have been propaganda, so they'd feel that much more grateful for their district even if they had to work harder than their neighbours.

Not that it mattered in the end. Ambrosia was dead, and Petra had her own recovery to worry about, and after a while it was easier not to think about it. President Snow had been kind and understanding, he'd remembered her favourite cookies and always asked about her grassroots efforts back home instead of her fashion choices or her latest endorsement line, and, well. No one who could be so attentive to her could ever endorse something so cruel as what those rumours suggested, could he?

But he did, didn't he. Holding the contradiction in her head hurts, it's like trying to grab onto two train cars speeding off in opposite directions. It's hard to imagine that the man who once put a gentle hand under Petra's arm when she stumbled and led her to a chair — who made sure there was a chair for her the next time, who sat in his own chair so she'd know she wouldn't be dishonouring him for sitting herself — could also murder a Victor's entire family for simply using the Arena to his advantage. That he could smile at Petra and ask her about her favourite place in all of District 2, bring up live footage on the vidscreen so she could show him when words failed, while forcing Victors to have sex with sponsors and killing their loved ones if they said no.

Petra's chest aches, and the worst part is not that she didn't know. It's not that Brutus never told her, or Ronan, or Odin, even though they clearly knew. It's not even that Brutus _died_ for this and Petra let him, that Petra mourned but never doubted the honour of his sacrifice, not for a second, because the President willed it and thus it must be necessary. The worst part is that she's scared, because after all of this, what really matters is she's frightened for herself, afraid of what will happen if the President finds out she's no longer the blind, complacent pet who's served him all these years.

After all her talk of honour and loyalty and doing the right thing even when it's hard, at the end of the day Petra is a coward, self-serving and self-centred and absolutely unworthy. If Brutus were alive he would be ashamed of her.

Tears burn her eyes and choke thick in her throat but Petra refuses to cry. She did enough of that in her play-acting for the President, thank you, and doing it alone without an audience feels uncomfortably like wallowing. Instead something inside her snaps, and Petra pushes herself to her feet and grabs her cane. "I'm going for a walk," she calls out. Ronan is napping, and Odin glances up from his book with a concerned expression but doesn't argue when Petra waves him off.

There are no guards at the door, only a pair of Avoxes. Petra can wander the guest floor of the mansion as freely as she likes; the Peacekeeper escorts are only for formal invitations or when she wants to take a turn outside. No one stops her when she leaves the Two-occupied hallway and heads for the wing where the Ones have taken up residence.

Avoxes stand at the foyer there, too, and Petra studies them for a moment, a strange twisting in her gut. Ever since the rebel broadcast — since her Avox escort woke her to show her the unaired footage of the Victors' Village on fire — Petra can't go back to seeing them as part of the background, no matter how much she tries.

There will be cameras here, like everywhere, but after wrestling with herself, Petra decides to risk it. "Where from?" she asks, her gestures choppy. The longer her stay, the more she wishes she'd asked Devon to teach her more. (He'll never teach her anything ever again.)

His gaze flickers. He's pretty, almost preternaturally so, with smooth, dark skin and arresting green eyes. Petra hopes she's wrong. He hesitates, but after a moment he responds — quick, furtive, so fast she almost misses it.

The first word she doesn't recognize. The second, on the other hand, is _One_.

Petra hisses out a long breath. "I'm sorry," she signs. She doesn't ask him what he did to wind up here, serving in the presidential mansion with his tongue cut out, not when she's pretty sure she knows. Out loud she says, "I'd like to talk to Luxa, if she'll see me."

He slips inside. A few moments pass — Petra doesn't try to chat with the other Avox, a young woman whose eyes are hard as she stares out past Petra into the hallway beyond, jaw clenched — then he returns and nods, holding open the door. Petra exhales, curls her fingers tighter around the handle of her cane, and heads inside.

It's only Luxa, thank — thank the mountains. Petra had half expected her to invite the others to sit with her, been afraid of finding them all arranged on the sofa, facing her like a tribunal, but whether she's curious or surprised or wants to keep Petra all to herself when she peels off her skin and eats her alive, either way the room is empty except for the two of them when Petra enters and the door closes behind her.

Silence grows, magnified by the ticking of the enormous clock in the corner. Petra struggles to breathe, to remember what words are. She had three years of intensive image training, several hours every day, you'd think she could manage a simple social interaction. They shook hands on stage at Petra's Victory Tour. Petra doesn't remember. _I'm sorry I forgot your name_ , Petra thinks.

Finally Luxa breaches the wall between them. "If you're here for sex, I hope you saved your allowance," she says in a throaty voice that trails a fingernail down Petra's spine. "After that broadcast you have no excuse thinking I'm going to entertain for free."

Petra flushes hard, the blood hitting her face with the force of a tidal wave. "No!" she bursts out. "That's not — that isn't — not at all. That's not why I'm here."

Not that Luxa isn't gorgeous. Dark hair, dark, narrow eyes, sharp-featured and golden-skinned, she could have been thirty-five or fifty and Petra would have no way to tell unless she counted back through the Victor list. She tilts her head and examines Petra with a alertness in her expression that reminds her of a predator, as though if Petra stumbles Luxa will leap off the sofa with a blade in each hand and carve out her insides.

Petra takes a deep breath and tries again. "She asked me to kill her in the Arena," she says. "That night, the last night we — before the split."

Luxa freezes, and if they were in the Arena now Petra would be watching her shoulder for the moment when she reaches for a hidden weapon. "If you're looking for thanks or absolution, girl, I think you were better off with the sex," she warns.

"It's not that." Petra clenches her teeth. This is not working out how she wanted to, not at all. "I meant — she knew. What would happen to her if she won. She knew already and she didn't want to win. Why do you tell them, if that means you send in girls who don't want to come back?"

This time the pause carries a different weight, less crackling danger and more tension, like a length of rope dipping under the first tentative step. Finally Luxa lets out a sigh. "You think it would be better to send them in unprepared, do you? Fill their heads with promises of glory and an easy life, then snatch it out from under them once they think they've won? You think that's kinder than giving them the tools they need to succeed, and letting them choose whether they're prepared to make that trade? Ambrosia was conflicted, yes. It might surprise you to learn that others are more than willing to do what it takes."

Petra stays quiet. Ever mindful of the cameras, the fear that kept Odin frozen, that wouldn't let him give in to her arrogant demand for information, she takes a moment to process. "I don't know," she says finally. "You thought it was worth it, when they told you?"

Luxa favours her with a hard smile. "I must have," she says, and Petra knows better than to ask again.

She should probably leave. Whatever Petra wanted by coming here, whatever answers she thought she'd get — _absolution_ , Luxa said with a curl to her lip — it clearly isn't happening. Yet something holds her here, slides a hook between her ribs and anchors her in place. She digs for it, fishes blindly like sticking her hands in an open wound and searching for a particular organ while her fingers slide in blood and viscera, but finally she finds it.

"Why didn't they save the Academy?" Petra bursts out. Once again Lexa's face tightens, pinching around the mouth and nose as though Petra slapped her, but she forges on. "The rebels — they had to know what was happening there. They knew the trainees were innocent. Why did they —"

Petra saw the footage. She can't think about it now, not without her gorge rising, but the only word for it is _massacre_.

Luxa's smile turns, like a knife tilting edgewise. "Oh, little girl," she says. "You're one of us, now think. Do you really think anyone out there would look at us, even our children, and see anyone who looks like 'victim'?"

Petra goes still, her breaths sounding loud in her head. Luxa stretches, the movement languorous and carrying the whisper of sex even as she pulls one elbow behind her head to crack the joints of her spine into place. "But you are," Petra whispers. Her chest squeezes. "You didn't ask for any of this."

"Tell that to the rebels when they finally storm this mansion and put a bullet in my head," Luxa says idly, then laughs at Petra's flinch. "No, that would be far too kind. I know what's coming for me. The best I can hope for is that if all hope is lost, one of the Peacekeepers takes pity on us and shoots us all before the rebels get to us. In a post-war world, Petra, there will be no kindness for any of us." Her eyes find Petra's and hold her motionless. "You included. I hope you realize that."

The roaring in Petra's ears washes over her, blanking out all thought. She's frozen, the emptiness threatening to take her away as she struggles to stay present. Luxa lets out a quiet sigh and sits up, swinging her legs over the side of the couch. "Looks like I broke you," she says, and it isn't friendly but it's not — exactly — unkind, either. "I would call for your mentor, but I can't even do that, can I." Petra sucks in a wet breath at the stab and Luxa's mouth curls at the corner in an expression that might be something like pity.

But no, Petra is not a child, and she will not break down and need Odin to come ferry her away like a fresh Victor. She draws herself up, forces herself to breathe ( _inhale-two-three-four, hold-two-three-four, exhale-two-three-four_ ) and takes a step back. "Thank you for your time," Petra says stiffly. "I won't bother you again."

Luxa flicks her fingers, unconcerned, and Petra is very careful not to flee on her way out. She has no idea whether anyone was watching that conversation — if anything that passed between them counts as treason, if she slipped up and said something that might merit a call to the President, a warning that his loyal Victor is having doubts — but she can't think on it now. All Petra can do is keep going like nothing is wrong.

Until the rebels come and kill them all — or worse, keep them alive for whatever sick example they want to make later. Petra thinks of the burning Village and refuses to imagine whatever punishment they'll have in store for the girl who stayed loyal on camera to the very end.

 _The best I can hope for is that if all hope is lost, one of the Peacekeepers takes pity on us and shoots us all_.

Petra stops, heart hammering in her chest. As plans go, this isn't exactly a winner — it's about on par with jumping off the platforms early, or running straight for the Cornucopia and the gamut of Careers armed with weapons who will slaughter you before you get there. But it would be better than waiting, better than giving herself over and putting her fate in someone else's hands.

But if the Capitol wins —

If the Capitol wins, the country will go back to stability, no more riots and massacres and bombings, but some things will have to change. And if President Snow still trusts Petra, if he's still willing to listen to her, then maybe she can convince him. He listened to Ronan all these years, maybe it can be her turn.

And if it doesn't work — if she's executed for treason — then maybe that's the way it should be.

Oddly calm for the first time in days, Petra takes the long way back to the Two guest wing, lost in thought.

* * *

After all the weeks and months of preparation, the stealth missions and the recon and gathering supplies, the sneak rescues and extractions and smash-and-grabs and the final showdown in Two, it's almost unreal how fast the prep for the assault on the Capitol goes down. Within a week, the Second Rebellion has managed to pull its people from all over the district, using stolen hovercrafts and a handful of unmonitored rail lines and the old evacuation tunnels under the city to move everyone into various safehouses scattered around the Capitol.

With the exception of Beetee and Rokia, who stay behind in Thirteen to avoid tipping off Coin, Brutus and the other able-bodied Victors are the last ones in. The older Victors and the ones most affected by torture get flown in on a hovercraft, but those who can walk take the tunnels with the soldiers from Eight. Brutus had no idea the tunnels leading into the Capitol even existed, but as he's come to learn over the past few months, there's a lot about the central city he never knew about. Like the fact that the downtown core is rigged with a bunch of Gamemaker traps to make a direct ground assault all but impossible, _just in case_.

"The whole city is under strict lockdown," Rigel says when Brutus asks whether ordinary citizens are being drowned in quicksand or eaten by mutts if they risk a trip to the grocery store. "Some areas were evacuated, others are being told to stay inside. We can move around using the tunnels as long as we don't run into any Peacekeepers. No one bothers to patrol the tunnels because nobody knows they're there."

Brutus would be more wary about that except that's how Rigel and his squad half made half their Capitol runs, and they've come out just fine without ever running into trouble. Even Claudius has used the evacuation tunnels, since they couldn't risk using a hovercraft to get them into the city on the kind of cake mission they took him on the first few times. But they managed to get everyone inside the Capitol without tripping any alarms, so Brutus is more than willing to trust Rigel's word on this one.

It's not in his best interests to argue otherwise, anyway. Not when he came to make sure it's really safe to get into the Capitol for good.

Rigel knows, and the worst part is he doesn't even give Brutus the satisfaction. "I know what you're going to say," he says, holding up one hand. "You promised to wait until we relocated to the Capitol, and we did." He checks his watch, ostentatiously, not bothering to pull up his sleeve so he can actually see the face. "Roughly two hours ago. I appreciate your patience." It's only a little cheeky, but given that Brutus all but took his head off the first time he didn't get the answer he wanted, he decides to let it go. "And the answer, by the way, is yes. It's time."

Brutus grips Rigel's shoulder, half dizzy with relief, and Rigel reaches up to clasp his forearm. "I know it's been hard, waiting," Rigel says. "And I was kidding you just now, but I do appreciate it. Now that we've had time to get everything set, we're in a much better position to rescue her than if we'd jumped the gun."

He sits and listens to the briefing, which sounds pretty straightforward as missions go. It's just Rigel's squad and Brutus, both because they know better than to try to keep him at home and because without him there's no way they can convince Petra to come along without wasting time. Claudius is staying back from this one for similarly practical reasons.

They're flying in, for the sake of speed, with the hovercraft staying in stealth a safe distance above the mansion to avoid tripping the alarms. Rigel will spoof the cameras, get them to switch over to a backup feed of innocuous-looking footage until they're out. "It's kept in reserve in case we ever need to assassinate anyone," Rigel says bluntly, and Brutus winces in spite of himself, even now. "The whole point of it is to go undetected by the system and give the security staff plausible deniability. Whereas if you roll back the live footage a few hours, you run the risk of the guards seeing themselves patrolling or going to the bathroom on camera and blowing the whole thing."

Once they have Petra and the others, it's a quick trip back to the roof, up to the hovercraft and out. Brutus knows better than to bank on nothing going wrong, but Rigel and his team know the mansion better than anyone, and they've already done the recon and memorized the layout of their route based on where the Twos are being held. Most it goes through back hallways and blind spots, and since they're not going anywhere near Snow's floor, there will only be a couple of Peacekeepers actually patrolling.

"As long as we stick to the plan and avoid detection, we should be fine," Rigel says. "This is a stealth extraction, our priority is to get them out as fast as we can with a minimal footprint. Emin will know it was us as soon as it's discovered they're gone, but —" He shrugs. "It was only a matter of time. We're leaving tonight, so I suggest you get your rest now."

Brutus would say he has no chance of sleeping, except he has two Arenas under his belt and plenty of practice forcing himself to rest even when his brain is racing. He's heading back to grab a few hours when he runs into Lyme, fully geared up with an assault rifle slung over her shoulder.

"Hello," Brutus says, blinking at her. "Going for a walk?"

"Got tapped for a mission," Lyme says. He waits for her to tell him what it is, but the pause only drags out between them.

Finally the sword strikes home, and Brutus stares at her. "Are you seriously 'need to know'ing me right now?"

"You're walking right into President Snow's _house_ ," Lyme says, matter of fact, though she at least looks a little apologetic about it. "So yeah, actually, I am."

Brutus shoots her a look, but he can't exactly blame her for it. "Yeah, all right, fine. But you'd better have something good to show for it when we both get back."

Lyme punches him in the arm. "You too," she says. "Bring 'em home."

They hug — quickly, a one-armed, back-slapping affair, but genuine — because damned if Brutus didn't die and Lyme come this close not to see each other off properly, then Lyme heads out to find her squad and set off for her mysterious mission. Brutus spends a good five seconds wondering what the hell she's up to before he shoves it back. Petra and the others are waiting, and they're relying on him to have his head in the game.

Once he's in his room, Brutus shuts off the lights, flings an arm across his face, and counts backwards from a thousand until he loses track and falls asleep. It's Marius who wakes him, already dressed and ready to go, and it only takes Brutus a minute to grab his gear and follow.

Selene and Dash are quiet as Brutus joins them in the hovercraft, no pre-mission banter or mood-lifting today, and Brutus doesn't try to instigate a conversation. Instead he leans back, lets his head rest against the bulkhead, and listens to the hum of the engines as the craft takes to the sky.

* * *

If nothing else, Selene will have to buy Claudius a drink when this is all over, because slipping through the President's mansion should be the most triggering thing ever but she doesn't so much as twitch. There are memories everywhere, from galas and long nights doing security sweeps during her first 'break in the newbie' tours back in the day to card games in the break room with Scouts who are no doubt here tonight, but Selene is able to put that all aside and focus on the mission, no problem. Marius glances at her once or twice on the way in, before they slide their faceplates down, but he must be satisfied with what he sees because he only nods and goes back to checking his maps.

Petra is a whole other mess, but Selene will deal with that when she's forced to and not a second sooner. Plus maybe if she's lucky, Petra will get assigned to a separate safehouse and Selene will never actually have to confront her at all. Wouldn't that make things simple.

The way in is quick and painless, not that Selene expected otherwise. Extractions rarely go south on the way in, it's getting out that's tricky once all the pieces are in play. She stands guard while Dash picks the lock on the servant's entrance, lets the others file in ahead and takes up the rear. She can see the tense line of Dash's shoulders as they make their way through — the movement of Avoxes is the only thing Rigel can't account for, since they come and go according to the whims of the residents and not by schedule — but Selene is calm, even as she's extra-aware of every sound. If someone discovers them, she knows what she has to do. One problem, one solution, no branching logic or complicated hypotheticals. Easy math.

And then they're inside. "Petra first," Brutus says in a low voice, and when Rigel glances at him he shakes his head. "Not that, I just mean she'll take longer. Ronan and Odin, they won't need convincing."

"I'll go get them," Marius says, and slips away, leaving the four of them together. Selene almost offers to go with him, but he doesn't ask her to and she knows what that means. Whether she likes it or not, Selene is the only other person in this room who knows Petra and might have a shot of convincing her. Selene has never managed to change Petra's mind in their entire lives, but she has managed to annoy her into moving, and maybe that's one of those skills a person never really forgets.

Brutus lets out a hard breath, a little shaky, and Rigel clasps his shoulder. "You've got this," Rigel says, and Brutus gives him a quick, grateful smile.

Dash steps in close as they slip in through the door. "She sleeps in her pyjamas, right?" he says in an undertone. "I don't have to close my eyes or anything?"

Selene tries to imagine Petra doing anything as carefree as sleeping naked and a wild burst of laughter tries to claw its way up her throat. "You're fine," she whispers back. She even remembers to sling her rifle over her shoulder at the last minute, so Petra won't wake up to a gun pointed at her head. See, isn't she thoughtful, Claudius should be proud.

They stand along the back corner at a respectful distance as Brutus kneels by the bed. Selene can't help but study Petra in her sleep, the scowl puckering her forehead and sticking out her lower lip, the hand she has curled to her chest in the same way she used to hold her mace in the Arena except there are no weapons here.

Brutus hesitates — it's weird, watching him, seeing anything but determination in his movements from someone so large and powerful, Selene feels like she should have had to pay admission — but then he reaches out and brushes a loose curl from her forehead. "Petra," he says quietly. "Wake up."

She does, with a start and a gasp, sitting straight up and darting back so her shoulders hit the wall, the blankets clutched between them in a barrier. "What the fuck!" Petra spits out, staring at Brutus wide-eyed, chest heaving. "What the _fuck_! What is this!"

"It's me," Brutus says, not moving. He holds his hands out, careful, placating. "Petra, it's me, sweetheart. I've come to get you."

Petra says nothing for several ragged breaths. She doesn't miss the Peacekeepers, her gaze raking over them, hard and suspicious, and Selene has never been more glad for the opaque faceplate than when Petra's eyes dig into hers. But then her focus turns back to Brutus, and something in her face breaks, just for a second, before she yanks it back. Not yet, Selene thinks. She won't let herself until she knows.

"Prove it," Petra says, raising her chin. "Tell me what I said to you."

Brutus hisses. "Petra —"

Petra slashes one hand through the air, the gesture making Dash jump. "You think I give a shit if some random Peacekeepers know, if it means it's really you? You know what I'm talking about. Tell me what I said."

Dash inclines his head toward Selene, just slightly, and she lets one shoulder rise and fall in response. Whatever this is, it wasn't in any of Petra's files, and Selene can't think of anything that happened before the Arena that she might have told Brutus that would have this kind of effect. Against her will, Selene finds herself intrigued, Games damn it all. Petra would laugh if she knew.

Brutus lets out a long breath, but then his shoulders set in a stubborn line and he lifts his head, as though daring any of them to say anything. Interesting. "You asked me to help you kill yourself," he says, and oh. Oh, _shit_. That is not what Selene was expecting at _all_. "You wanted me to slip you an overdose and tell everyone you must have done it yourself when I wasn't looking."

His voice cracks, and Selene isn't a Victor, she doesn't know anything about mentors and the whole mystical bond thing they have going other than what she's gleaned from files and glimpses while on guard duty, but — that had to hurt. She's pretty sure that's about on par with expecting a parent to throw their baby into traffic. She looks at Petra, who's breathing fast, staring at him with one hand splayed to her chest, fingers pressed below her collarbone.

"But I didn't," Brutus says. "I told you no, and I went and I let Lyme kick the shit out of me until I got my head on straight and I stopped feeling like I'd failed you, and then I came back and I pushed you until you snapped. And I kept on pushing and you rose to meet it every fucking time, because you're my girl and you're amazing, sweetheart, and I have never been prouder of anyone or anything in my entire life."

Petra swipes one hand across her eyes. "Okay," she says, her voice wild and shaky. "Okay. So this is —"

"A rescue," Brutus says. "Put your clothes on, honey, we're getting out of here."

Selene waits to see if Petra will argue, demand to know exactly what's going on, how Brutus is alive and how he got here and what happened, but wonder of wonders, she slides out of bed without a word and starts pulling a set of clothing out of the drawers. Brutus really must be magic if he can override Petra's deep-seated need to be difficult for no reason, Selene thinks, then immediately feels bad, because — well, of course. If she'd wanted to commit suicide and Brutus pulled her out of it, she'd probably listen to him, too.

(Well, no, Selene would say thanks and then immediately skip town so she'd never have to see him or be reminded of that experience ever again, but Petra has always been the sort of person to run headlong into her feelings, not away from them.)

Petra's also not wearing anything except an oversized t-shirt, which means both Dash and Rigel politely turn to stare at the ceiling while she changes. Selene actually forgets she should probably look away, after all the years of changing together and seeing each other at their most raw and vulnerable, and it's only when Petra catches her — shirt half over her head, an odd look on her face — that Selene thinks _whoops_ and makes a point of turning around.

For someone who managed to go this long without getting caught, Selene really needs to step it up. It's just that being in the same room with Petra after so long is … really, really weird.

At least it didn't take very long at all to convince her to come, Selene thinks, which means her guess about Petra being scared was likely right on point. She'd half been prepared for a huge argument anyway, something about Petra having a duty to stay behind and — something, Selene can't predict what Petra will decide is her honour-bound responsibility today, only that it's likely to happen, but maybe they'll actually get away without Petra pulling a Herself today.

Out in the common area, Marius has successfully roused Odin and Ronan, who are dressed and packed and ready to go. "My boy," Odin says when he sees Brutus, his voice breaking, and he pulls Brutus in for an embrace, audience be damned, and doesn't let go for a long time.

"I know," Brutus says as Odin buries his face in his shoulder. "You did everything you could. I know."

Selene shifts, almost wishing someone would burst through the door so she could shoot something. So many emotions, raw and unfettered and just … everywhere, leaking all over the place. She misses Claudius and his skittish aversion to feelings, wishes he were here so they could go spar or play target practice or have a darts competition.

"We need to leave," Rigel says, apologetic but with a clear undertone of command. "The longer we stay, the more risk we're taking."

Odin pulls back and takes a deep breath. "Yes, of course," he says, passing a hand over his eyes. "Apologies."

Petra frowns, looking back and forth between them, and uh oh. Selene knows that face. Whatever's coming next, nobody in this room is going to like it. "So you already have the Ones?"

Aaaand there it is.

Rigel and Marius exchange glances. "This is a priority mission," Rigel says carefully. "The other Victors —"

"You mean you're just going to leave them here and hope they don't get shot or executed in the final assault, or worse," Petra snaps, eyes blazing. "Did you even think about what will happen to them if they get left behind? Can you promise me that they'll be safe? How do you think they'll feel when they find out there was a rescue mission and nobody bothered to come for them?"

This time Brutus tries. "Petra, of course I want everyone safe, but my priority is you," he says. "I'm your mentor, you have to understand that. Getting everyone out right now —"

"If you want me then you get everyone." Petra clenches her jaw so hard a muscle jumps. "If you won't risk it, give me a weapon and wait for me at the exit and I'll go get them myself."

"Petra —"

Oh for _fuck's sake_. "We're wasting time," Selene says. "We could rescue them twice in the time it takes to change Petra's mind on anything, so unless someone knocks her unconscious and carries her to the hovercraft in the next five seconds, I say we just go. It will be faster than trying to argue with her."

Petra whirls on her, features set in a very familiar mix of outrage and disbelief. "Excuse you, eat shit and go fuck yourself!" she bursts out. A shocked silence falls over the group as the laughter bubbles up inside Selene again, and Petra's mouth falls open. "I mean — that was rude, I don't know where that came from —"

Selene does, but seeing how _thirty seconds_ of interacting with Petra has blown her cover, she is absolutely not going to risk opening her mouth again.

Rigel clears his throat. "Extraction it is," he says delicately. "Unfortunately, while I would rather get all of you to the hovercraft first, it will be quicker if we all go together. Let's move quickly, please." Before they head out, he fixes Petra with a serious stare. "If we do this, I need to know you'll follow orders. I can rely on Brutus because he listens and he does what I tell him, because he trusts my expertise and knows I can keep him safe. I can't do that if I'm worrying you're going to argue with me."

Petra actually wilts a little, which Selene would be more amazed at if she hadn't taken the full force of Rigel and Marius' disappointed squad commander faces more than once and knows exactly how devastating they can be. "Yes sir," Petra says without a hint of irony. She even lets Marius place her in the middle of the protective phalanx without protesting.

The Ones, as Selene predicted, are not as sanguine about the whole thing. It takes a bit of Rigel's charisma dialled up to 11 to convince them that they're not one of Coin's rebel groups here to capture them for nefarious purposes, and even then, a few of them are still suspicious and seem half ready to take their chances where they are.

"Absolutely not!" Petra snaps, stepping forward. "You all know what will happen if you stay. We don't know what happens if we leave, but that's better odds, isn't it? Who picks certain death instead of uncertain survival? Meat tributes, that's who! Are you really going to stay here and wait to be murdered and tortured and used as examples of the old regime by people who don't give a shit about what you've suffered through, just because you don't want to give me the satisfaction of having rescued you? Come with us, then you'll have all the time in the world to call me any name you want and make sure I know I'm a self-righteous bitch and you don't owe me anything."

The younger Victors cross their arms, but Selene catches some of the older ones trying not to let their lips twitch. Finally Luxa steps forward, and she's not the oldest or the leader, but something passes between her and Petra that Selene doesn't understand. She really hopes it isn't a sex thing, Petra always had a thing for the older female Victors in training and okay, no, abort that thought cadet.

"Let's go," Luxa says. "My knives are thirsty, and I know I'm not the only one."

And that's that. For all their glaring, the Ones are even better at following orders than Petra, and they fall in line and don't argue or even whisper to each other as the group moves through the halls. Rigel and Marius take their time, consulting their map now and then — they memorized the layout of the alarms and everything else based on the original extraction, not the whole floor — but it's a refresher more than anything else. They've got this. It'll be fine.

They almost make it.

Selene doesn't know what tipped them off, whether they triggered a silent alarm after all, or the security staff caught onto the spoofed footage, or an Avox spotted them and ran to tell the guards. Maybe whoever's in charge decided to switch things up, or maybe Petra's delay pushed them over into the middle of the night shift change and nobody realized. In the end it doesn't really matter why, or how; either way, they're almost at the hovercraft when they run into a squad of armed Peacekeepers.

This time, at least, they're not blocking the way to the exit, but making a run for it now is a good way to get everyone shot in the back. The Ones are spoiling for a fight, all taut lines and arms ready at their sides, and unlike Petra they won't have chatted with their guards on the balcony and offered them flowers. There's blood in the air and they scent it, and Selene would call them reckless for thinking they could take on a squad of armed Peacekeepers barehanded except she knows full well that for combatants from One, every fight is a potential suicide run.

"Put down your weapons," says the squad leader, and Selene exhales hard because that's Troy. Of course it is, of course he's giving them the chance to surrender instead of firing outright just like Brin, because he and Brin used to take the juniors out for drinks after graduation and he was the best at wrangling cocky twenty-year-olds without setting off Selene's authority-buttons, and they've already condemned Brin to torture and execution, so why not her partner too?

Petra steps forward. "I'm going willingly," she says. "Please, I'm scared and I don't want to stay here. They're taking me somewhere safe. Isn't that what you want?"

Troy hesitates, and the two junior squad members glance at each other. Selene wracks her brain for a minute, trying to remember who they put with Troy after the last rotation, who they'd give to Petra if they wanted her safe and relaxed and comfortable, and at last it hits her. It's Corin and Nicholas, two of the boys in their Senior year, the ones who joined the Scouts along with Selene and managed to pull the majority of the diplomatic shifts.

"Petra," Troy says finally, "the President wants you here, where he knows you're safe. Whatever these people have said to you, you can't trust them. They're traitors."

Petra flinches, but she doesn't move, and huh. There was a time when just hearing that word would've sent her into a mental breakdown. Rigel presses his advantage, but Selene tunes out the argument. She knows Troy, and he's fond of Rigel and he has a good heart, but he isn't Brin. He's not a revolutionary. He'll give them the chance to lay down their weapons and surrender but he isn't going to walk away.

If he knew what they'd done to Brin, he wouldn't even have given them that.

And so Selene takes the minute or so they have to mark out the terrain, checking the angles and mapping out the distance to the hovercraft, balancing the number of shots at her disposal against the number of opponents and the lack of cover for her to reload. Whatever they do, they'll have to do it fast.

Rigel and Troy's argument turns heated. His soldiers raise their weapons, and so does Selene, cradling the butt of her rifle between her chest and shoulder. Petra hisses and falls back without being told, and Selene is vaguely aware of her presence at her elbow before shutting it out entirely.

"Last chance," Troy warns them. "We can put in a good word if you come willingly."

"I appreciate the offer," Rigel says. He'd been shouting a minute ago, but now his tone turns disappointed, almost sad. "But I can't do that."

He gives the order to fire. A second later, Troy's faceplate explodes in a mess of blood and bone, and his body collapses to the ground in a heap. For a moment there's no sound except Petra's harsh breathing and the rattle of the empty shell casing as Selene slides the next round into her rifle's chamber.

Then the spell breaks, and it's tightly controlled chaos.

Selene disappears into the fight, but she doesn't _disappear_ , even when quarters get close and she has to abandon her guns to fight hand to hand. Even though it's Peacekeepers — even though it's _friends_ — Selene keeps her head on straight, and she doesn't slide sideways back to the Centre or her Field Exam or anywhere else, doesn't fall away into the joy of it and start listening to the song of blood on her knuckles.

(Okay, maybe a little. She finds herself grinning once after taking one of her opponents down with a particularly slick move, and whirling to see if Petra caught it, take _that_ — but then she brings it back, remembers sparring with Claudius and coming at him with a knife again and again, and next time she stays right here.)

And then they're through, and running for the hovercraft, and one of the downed Peacekeepers squeezes off a few wild shots before another — Corin, Selene can't help thinking, now that there's some distance, he came back from his Field Exam pale and shaking and they all thought he would be cut but somehow he clung through till the end — yells, "Don't, you'll hit the Victors!"

And because they don't have orders on that score — the President must not have specified "kill them if you can't keep them here" — that hesitation is enough for Rigel and Marius to manage to get the last of the Victors on board. Selene scrambles onto the ramp after offering Petra a hand up, and as it closes and the hovercraft wheels away, she's very conscious of the blood pounding in her ears and the fact that there's nowhere left to hide.

Petra rounds on her immediately. "You," she says, pointing a finger in a gesture that's very much like Brutus and almost makes Selene laugh, if they were anywhere else. "Take your helmet off." Selene bristles in spite of herself, but Petra only steps closer. " _Selene_ ," she says, slowly and deliberately.

Well, fuck.

Resisting the urge to snap and tell Petra she'll take her helmet off only if she can shove it in her stupid face (apparently Petra isn't the only one with teenage comebacks ready and waiting to spring out unbidden), Selene reaches up and pulls her helmet off, tucking it under her arm. She keeps her expression neutral even as Petra sucks in a sharp breath, gaze flitting over her face.

"It is you," Petra says, her expression unreadable. "That explains why hearing a random Peacekeeper's voice made me want to punch something."

"You're welcome for backing you up in there," Selene says, tamping down a spark of irritation. "And for rescuing you. And saving your life, by the way."

"Hang on," Brutus interjects. "What the hell is —"

They're interrupted when Odin, quiet and forgotten in a corner of the hovercraft, collapses to the floor with a heavy _thud_ , blood seeping between his fingers and blooming across his shirt. "It's nothing," Odin says, staring down at his bloodstained hand in surprise. "It's nothing. I hardly feel it."

Then his eyes roll back and he sinks down, unmoving, and Selene and Petra's stupid teenage rivalry hardly matters anymore.

* * *

Brutus grips Odin's hand in both of his, fingers slipping in blood. Odin's gaze slides away from his, eyes fading, struggling to focus, before they fix on him. "My boy," Odin says again. Red stains his teeth, the corners of his mouth. "I can't believe —"

"I'm here," Brutus says. He lifts Odin's hand to his chest, holds it close even as it aches to breathe. "I'm okay. Everyone's okay. Devon, Emory, Hera, everybody. They're all safe. We got them out before the Village burned. Everyone's fine."

Tears leak from Odin's eyes. He coughs, a bloody spume falling from his lips. Dash and Marius work in silence at his side, trying their best, but Brutus has seen too many Arenas, has watched too many good kids die from the mentor seat. He doesn't need an overlay with vital signs and sponsor odds to know that if he tried to order a medkit now, the system would override it as a waste of money.

Petra sits at Odin's head, cushioning him in her lap, her face pale and stricken. She strokes his hair back from his forehead, tugs her sleeve over her hand and curls her fingers tight to keep the fabric steady, then reaches down to wipe his mouth. Her mouth trembles but her hand is steady, and she doesn't make eye contact and Brutus doesn't try to make her.

"You're safe," Odin says again. His head falls back, eyes going distant. His grip loosens in Brutus' fingers but Brutus holds on. He can't let go, not yet. "I'm so glad — you're safe."

"I'm safe," Brutus says. And _fuck_ , all those times he wished he could be there for his kids while they died, bleeding out with their skulls smashed in or their guts sliced open, but here he is with the man he's known half his life and he can't come up with a damn useful thing to say. At least the Ones know better than to open their mouths, because whatever valid point Petra made about not leaving them behind, Brutus is really not in the mood.

His throat closes, and as much as Brutus would love to tap in deep inside himself and find the secret well of feeling that would let him spill out all his emotions in a final goodbye, he scrabbles around for awhile but comes up empty. "You made me who I am," Brutus says finally. His eyes sting, and fuck, _fuck_ he hates this, he hates the whole fucking war, hates knowing that this is the first time it's touched him for real and that's a Game-damned luxury and a privilege. "I hope I make you proud."

"Every day." Odin smiles, though it takes him longer to get the words out. There's a whistle in his breath now, a rattling in his chest that means it won't be long. Dash and Marius glance at each other but keep trying, and Brutus hopes they know how grateful he is that they keep trying even though it's hopeless, just because it would feel wrong to sit back and wait. "And Petra —"

Petra lets out a soft noise like a whimper made of air, but either it's too much effort to talk or Odin's mind has wandered, because he smiles up at her but doesn't try to say anything else. She bends down and presses their foreheads together, shoulders shaking even as her hands stay strong and steady on either side of his face.

They stay like that together until Odin's hands fall and his face goes slack, until his chest goes still and the blood slows from his wound as his heart stops pumping. Brutus sucks in one breath, then another, aware that each new breath he takes brings him further into a new world without his mentor. Every heartbeat is one more that Odin will never take. Brutus slams down on his thoughts before they can propel him any further down the road of melodrama, he's dealt with loss he can deal with this, he can and he will, but his mentor is dead and Brutus can't breathe.

In front of him Petra lets out a long, shuddering exhale, and Brutus hasn't seen his girl in months but he knows how much she wants to scream, to take all her pain and rage and fling it at the world, shout and scream and sob and swear until her throat is raw and sore and scratchy and her voice disappears into a whisper. How much she wants to rip everything down, tear apart the harnesses and throw the supply crates across the hold and rip everything she can to pieces.

Brutus also knows damn well that no matter how much Petra wants to scream, she's not gonna do it with a hovercraft full of staring witnesses.

What she does do is hiss without raising her head. "They didn't mean to shoot him," she says. "They were just trying to stop us from leaving. They'd be horrified if they found out. It was a waste. This whole war, all of it, we're all fighting and killing each other and it's all just a _fucking_ —"

Petra cuts herself off, and Brutus should know what to say, he's the mentor that's his job, he's supposed to know what to do in every situation, but they never trained him for this. Nobody ever told him what to say when they're sitting with his mentor dead in his lap, Odin's blood smeared across his hands and soaking through his clothes.

Without looking up, Petra straightens her shoulders and sits back, smoothing Odin's hair back from his forehead and cleaning the last of the blood from his face. "Now would someone like to tell me what's going on?" she says. She's calm now, controlled, or so she sounds. The truth of it, Brutus knows, is that she's gone straight from furious to exhausted.

"I'll vote for that," says Dexter, because of course he does, and Brutus turns to give him a baleful look. "Hey, no, I'm not trying to take away from your loss here, but you were dead. I don't suppose any of ours were faking it, either?"

( _Cashmere's blood stains the water, her hair floating in the waves. Gloss hits the rocks first and rolls, eyes open and heavy with shock —_ )

"No," Brutus says, the weight of their deaths dragging him back all over again. "I'm sorry."

Dexter crosses his arms, taps his fingers against his bicep in a gesture of unconcern that fools nobody. "Never hurts to ask. But I'm not really in the right mood to tell the story again, so —"

"I watched you die," Ronan says crisply, and Brutus turns to him, half in shock and half in surprise that anything could penetrate the shroud of grief surrounding him. "I was there when Coriolanus ordered the Gamemakers to assassinate you as punishment for my failure to placate his ego. And now Odin has paid the price for our escape. So yes, I really would like to know what happened and who we're dealing with. Officer, do you mind?"

"Of course," Rigel says quickly.

Brutus eases his way out from under Odin's weight. He doesn't dare risk holding Petra, not in front of the others, but he's waited this long to see her and damned if he's going to stay at arm's length. "Hey, sweetheart," he says, coming around to sit beside her. "You wanna sit back? You're gonna stick to the floor once — when all that dries."

"He took care of me," Petra says. For a moment she doesn't move, but then she lets herself lean a little into Brutus' side, almost as though she isn't sure it's a good idea. "While you were — when you were dead, he made sure I — he kept me going, he was — and I couldn't save him."

Brutus finally takes a risk and slides his arm around her, and they don't speak until the hovercraft returns to the safe zone.

* * *

Lyme shows up two days later, grinning and not dragging anyone ahead of her on a medical stretcher or hauling bodies in bags, so they must've done all right. Brutus goes ahead to meet her because he figures it's best to warn her, he's given Petra time to get used to the idea of Lyme and Claudius being allies instead of traitors but she's hurting, and it's only fair that Lyme not walk into this unprepared.

"Hey," Brutus says. Lyme looks good, pleased with herself even with the shadows under her eyes that mean she hasn't had much rest the past few days. "How'd it go?"

"You first," Lyme says.

Brutus swallows. "Got Petra and Ronan. Odin's dead."

Lyme goes still. "Oh no," she says, and she and Odin never got along, she thought he was old-fashioned and a little sexist and he thought she was a few squirrels short of a forest, but that doesn't matter, not with something like this. "Shit, Brutus, I'm sorry." She runs a hand through her hair and glances back at their hovercraft as a clatter of boots sound from the inside. "I probably should've gone first."

Brutus has two seconds to ask her what the hell she means by that when Katniss Everdeen, her boy, and Finnick fucking Odair exit the hovercraft, along with half a dozen soldiers and a handful of pretty-looking folks who gotta be Capitol.

"Told you I should've gone first," Lyme says, shooting him an apologetic grimace. "Now you see why I couldn't tell you ahead of time."

Brutus can't deal with this shit, not right now. The kids look scared and overwhelmed, the soldiers are suspicious, and Finnick looks like he needs a drink or a nap or five minutes alone with the President and a table full of pointy objects. "I'm getting out of here," he says. "Catch me up later."

Lyme catches his arm. "I'm sorry about Odin," she says. "Talk later?"

"Yeah," Brutus says. A low headache starts up at the base of his skull and winds around from his temples to the hollows of his eye sockets. "Hope you brought booze."

Lyme punches him in the arm, and Brutus slips away before anyone recognizes him. Three people in that group were trying to kill Brutus the last time he saw them, and vice versa, and after the week he's head, he really cannot deal with that right now.

Instead he heads for the makeshift common area, where for the first time since the Reaping, all his kids are waiting for him.


	11. Chapter 11

The headache throbs behind Lyme's temples and presses in a tight band around her forehead. The various notes and blueprint sketches and battle plans swim before her eyes, but she forces herself to keep staring, cramming in every detail her brain is capable of absorbing. Whenever Coin's people call the attack, that's when they'll make their move, and Lyme needs to be able to recall every detail, every parameter, every possible iteration of the plan she and the rebels went over now because there won't be time before they head out.

It's Rigel and the Scouts with the inside knowledge of Snow's mansion, supplemented with the intel they gathered during the last extraction, and Rigel and Marius who drew up the plans but it's Lyme who will, at least nominally, be leading the strike team against President Snow. Every rebel mission needs a figurehead to follow, and since Lyme is the reason they have most of the reinforcements from Two they do have — and since the soldiers from Thirteen have at least fought alongside her and know her worth — that makes her the obvious choice.

No pressure, of course. A few months ago Lyme was a civilian whose only relevant experience was killing a handful of teenagers and criminals almost thirty years ago; now, the rebellion's obsession with recognizable leaders has propelled her to the forefront, but she's no more qualified to lead the strike team than most of the soldiers she's commanding, and far less than most. Most of Lyme's military endeavours have involved throwing herself at the mountain in a futile mission with the secret aim of justifying an air-strike massacre.

Lyme pushes both hands into her hair, digging the heels of her palms against her eyes. She mentored Misha with only a year of training and little more than determination to see her through it, and Misha had won mostly on her own power. Likewise, Lyme reminds herself, her soldiers won't be standing around waiting for her every order. They all know the plan, they might look to her for inspiration and to call the actual command, but they know what they're supposed to do.

By this point there's absolutely nothing new Lyme could possibly get out of studying the plans any longer, but if she stops giving her brain something to focus on it's going to veer into how she should probably talk to Brutus, only this time she has no fucking clue what to say.

The first time Brutus lost a tribute, Lyme gave him three weeks of moping in his house, choking down the bare minimum of tasteless, Centre-worthy food, ignoring his living Victor and growing a depression beard before dragging him out to the basketball court for a game of one-on-one. He'd hated her for it the whole time, only ended up snapping out of it when he'd beaned her in the head with the ball and sent her skull-first into the concrete. But it had been enough to break the surface, get him breathing air instead of murky misery, and she'd sent him back home to Emory to take those first steps toward healing.

But this — this is different. Brutus isn't moping, he's not sitting in his room refusing to eat or talk to anyone, he's not shutting anyone out or going through the motions of grief. He's helping the Scouts plan for the inevitable attack, he's doing last-minute supply runs and running recon and doing exactly the same thing Lyme is doing: keeping himself busy so there's no time to think about it.

Petra, Lyme can't help but notice, hasn't cried since she arrived, and while she's been pale and quiet and isolated herself from pretty much everyone except Devon and Emory — including Ronan, which Lyme will ask about after this is all over and can make time for simple pleasures like interpersonal dramas — she definitely hasn't exploded or snapped or shown any kind of emotional upheaval that Lyme would have expected from their most volatile Victor.

Petra and Brutus are playing chicken, Lyme thinks. Normally Brutus would call her on it, hold her down and tell her she has to process this, let it all out and scream and cry and do whatever she needs to, but if he does Petra will throw it right back in his face and ask him why he hasn't, if emotional catharsis is so great. Absolutely everything about this is terrible, but as far as the war goes, it's maybe not the worst time to cope by being stoic workaholics.

At least Petra hasn't come scream in her face about high treason, and as far as Lyme can tell she's left Claudius alone too. It's not like Lyme hasn't had practice handling stony silence at this point.

"Hey."

Lyme does not flinch, or jump, or freeze, because Career reflexes have taught her better than that, but she does let herself take one long breath, in and out, before responding. "Hey," she says, still staring down at her desk instead of turning around to look at the person who appeared in her doorway, silent as a cat.

"You left me," Artemisia says in a conversational tone that's as casual and safe as a knife flipped between the fingers. "Do you have any idea how shitty that made me feel?"

Lyme swallows. "No." She takes a risk, swings around in her chair to look at her, but Artemisia has her guarded face on, and not even Lyme can crack it today, not yet. She twists her hands in her lap, catches herself reaching for her sleeve in the old nervous gesture, wanting to pull the fabric down over her wrist. Artemisia's gaze flickers, a pointed one-two glance that misses nothing.

"You promised me two things when I won," Artemisia continues. Her voice remains bland but it's a lie, like taking the first step out onto cloudy ice. She holds up one hand, index finger extended, marking tallies in the air. "You said you wouldn't hit me — good job on that, by the way, credit where credit's due — but do you remember the other one?" She sucks in a breath, and there's the first real crack in the nonchalant armour, because it shakes on the inhale, though she catches herself on the way out. "You said you'd never leave."

Lyme digs her fingers into her knees. "I know."

"Sorry, no, you said you'd never leave me, _ever_ ," Artemisia says, her words twisting on a hidden pain. "And I know you meant it when you said it, but that just means at some point you stopped. At some point down the line you stopped living out that promise and started thinking about when you'd leave me behind. What I can't decide is whether it's worse if you made a conscious choice to break your word or if it never even occurred to you."

 _Exhausted_ is the wrong word. It's a quiet, bone-deep weariness that fills Lyme now, not so much a feeling as an absence. "I'm sorry," she says. The two most useless words in all of a person's vocabulary, but _not_ saying them is worse.

"I know." Artemisia's mouth thins, twitches in a ghost of a smile, but then it fades. She leans her balance sideways, thumps against the door frame with her arms crossed. Her fingers twitch like she's searching for the knife she would have had to leave behind. "It's not just you leaving when you said you wouldn't, I was eighteen years old and now I'm eighteen years out and people break promises, welcome to reality. But what gets me is that all those years of Claudius being glued to your side, being the perfect, well-behaved mentor's-dream Victor to my absolute shit-show nightmare, I was never jealous of him. Not once. It never even crossed my mind, because you were always so good about making sure I knew you loved me too." She shakes her head, eyes going far away. "Until you went back for him and not me, I would've sworn up and down you never had a favourite."

It wasn't about picking favourites, Lyme wants to tell her. The words bubble up inside her in a desperate fountain, and she has to dig her fingers into her wrist to stop herself. It's just that she and Claudius had taken the treason plunge years ago, and the absolute terror of that shared secret had been enough to nearly paralyze her. She didn't choose Claudius because she liked him better, only because he had made the same ugly, impossible choice she had. When the time came to run there had been no questions, no extra decisions to make, only the final step in a journey they'd started long ago.

Together, without Misha. Who — while not a rebel — was certainly no loyalist. She would have followed, Lyme realized with a sick gnawing in her gut. Not for the rebellion, not for any cause, but for her mentor. If only Lyme had asked.

"It gets better." Artemisia tips her head back to stare at the ceiling, and Lyme breathes very carefully at the telltale shimmer at the corners of her eyes. "I'm still hurt, and angry, and you know how I deal with it, I hurt the person who hurt me until it stops hurting me so much. And what I want to do is keep hurting you, except every time I do it doesn't make it any better, I just feel more and more like shit. And the worst part is —"

She swipes a hand across her eyes, a furious, jerky gesture that digs a hook into Lyme's chest and twists. "The worst part is Odin's dead, and all I can think is what if it was you, what if Odin came back alive and it was you who died on your stupid mission. What if you died and I was still pissed off at you, only then I got mad because I'm still angry, I shouldn't have have to stop just because one of us might get killed in this stupid battle and have regrets forever —"

Lyme has spent enough time of her own caught in spirals to recognize one, though hers tend to be internal rather than the torrent of words that made up Artemisia's particular brand of external processing. Half a second of indecision, then she pushes herself up, crosses the room and pulls Artemisia into her arms.

She stiffens, then collapses, boneless and exhausted and grateful, the sudden weight causing Lyme to lock her knees or risk dropping her. Lyme edges backwards, careful not to trip, until she finds her chair, where she tugs Artemisia into her lap like they aren't both grown women only two years apart.

"I fucking hate this," Artemisia says into her shoulder. She curls her legs, heels digging into Lyme's thigh. "I'm still angry. I want to keep being angry because it feels like I earned it, and nothing else makes sense right now. But I'm so tired and I want my mentor back, and it hurts."

Lyme rests her cheek against the side of Artemisia's head and wraps her arms around her, holding her steady even in their awkward position. "I don't know if I deserve to say you have your mentor back," she says, carefully. "Because you're right, mentors make one very important promise, and I broke it. I'll have to earn that back, and before a battle when there's no hope of keeping it is not the time to try to make it again. But — I'm here, girl, and I there is nothing I regret more than not taking you with me."

"Even though I would've made a shitty rebel," Artemisia says, with a trace of her old irreverence. "From the sounds of it, thirty seconds of me in a room with that woman and she would've had me executed."

"She would have fucking tried," Lyme snarls, and Artemisia laughs and headbutts her.

"You're right though," Artemisia says after a while. "'Mentor' hurts too much, but I'm glad you're back. Once this is all over, if we're not dead, we'll have to go home and beat the shit out of each other until it's fixed. You know, like civilized people."

"Damn straight," Lyme says, and pulls her in tighter.

And then — a commotion, a sudden cacophony of shouts and footfalls, and a runner pokes his head into the door. "We got the go-ahead," he says without even blinking, as though it's completely normal to look in on the commanding Victor and see her cuddling at her desk. "Beetee just sent word. Coin's sending everyone in against the Capitol now. Orders are to scramble and get everyone in position."

Artemisia slides off Lyme's lap, posture alert and ready, hands at her sides. She and Devon and Emory are part of the ground squads, making their way through the city and mingling with Coin's forces to draw out the Capitol defences and give the strike team — Lyme's team — as much time to get to the mansion as they can. They'll be heading into the city separately and won't see each other until it's all over.

"Understood," Lyme says, and the runner disappears to pass the message on. She turns to Artemisia, a rock in her throat, but they've been through this, Lyme and her squad need to move _fast_ , get as far as they can before the entire city arms itself at word of Thirteen incoming.

"Go get 'em, boss," Artemisia says, two furrows between her eyebrows.

Lyme kisses her forehead once, quick and desperate, then tears herself away and runs toward the hangar bay.

* * *

No time for goodbyes, and it's bad luck anyway. Mentors and tributes don't say _goodbye_ on the rooftop by the hovercrafts, they say 'good luck' or 'see you soon' or 'I'll be waiting'. One of Nero's girls, a wild, brilliant girl with wicked eyes, grinned at him and said _I'll try to steal you a souvenir_. Another one said _I'll cut out their hearts for you_ — or maybe that was the same girl, two sides of the same promise. It all runs together now.

Point being, mushy goodbyes and tearful final confessions are for people who know they're not coming back, and every Two knows that the best way to invite something to happen is to speak it into power. And so they don't; Lyme stops by for a second on her way out but they don't speak, Nero just holds her face in his hands and presses their foreheads together before stepping back. Her eyes blaze hard, shadowed by hollows, and he's never been prouder.

"Can't believe you get Snow all to yourself, you cheater!" Enobaria calls after her.

Lyme glances back over her shoulder, turns around to jog backwards in place. "Too slow," she tosses back, but then she grins a little. "Don't worry, I'll save you some."

"You'd better," Enobaria huffs, but then she's gone, and his youngest grumbles and shoves her hands into her armpits.

It took a war for his girls to get along, but Nero isn't going to question it, and he refuses to feel guilty for the happy glow that sits in the centre of his chest.

He and Enobaria are fighting, of course they are. Nero doesn't want to fight, he's hated the Hunger Games and the Capitol and the whole sick, twisted system since he was a kid, carried the truth about its twisted underbelly since the first cougar with her sweet, sickly smily dug her manicured fingers into his shoulder, but he's — tired. What Nero wants is to gather up his girls into his arms and carry them away somewhere safe, somewhere without guns and bombs and streets that apparently explode or flood with tar or the hundreds of Arena traps the Capitol saw fit to seed the streets with.

But Lyme has gone to take out the president, and Enobaria has been itching to draw blood ever since these rebels cleared her from medical, and Nero isn't going to sit in some safehouse while Enobaria lets loose on the city on her own. So here he is, outfitted in hasty protective gear with a standard-issue rifle and very basic training, waiting for his grid assignment while the others gather.

He lets himself think, wistfully, of the safehouses where Petra and the older, loyalist, injured or less able-bodied Victors will be spending their time, but there's no point in that, not when Enobaria has managed to pull a pair of knives out of thin air and is already practicing her strikes.

"Where did you get those?" Nero asks mildly, already composing a mental apology to whoever is in charge of inventory.

"Don't worry, I asked nicely," Enobaria says, not looking at him. Nero turns his stare on her, and she glances briefly at him, eyes sliding away, then scoffs and turns back, hands planted on her hips with the blades sticking out askew. "I did! Nobody's bleeding, no broken bones, no soft tissue injuries, _and_ nobody wet themselves. Devon would be proud."

Nero cracks a grin in spite of himself. "Well I know I'm proud, baby girl," he says, and Enobaria flashes him a smile. It's — still strange, seeing the false teeth, straight and white without a hint of fangs or gold. Makes her look younger, even past thirty, if only because his last memory of her with teeth like that is from before the Arena. "Save the rest for the streets."

"Oh don't worry." Enobaria's voice goes dark, like the bubble of fresh blood from a long, straight cut through soft flesh. "I know exactly what I'm doing."

Partway through the last-minute reminders of their assignments, as a rebel soldier hands out small handhelds with cloned maps of the various traps around the city centre, Nero registers a presence beside him. He glances sideways, once, then again, startled at the sight of Callista next to him, dressed in fatigues with her long, black hair braided tightly to her scalp.

"Calli?" Nero blinks at her, looks past to see Hera standing at her other side, jaw clenched. "I thought — you said you and Hera were taking a safehouse."

Callista doesn't turn to look at him. She stares straight ahead, arms crossed, one finger tapping against the swell of her bicep muscle, visible even through the baggy uniform fabric. "Here's the thing, darling," she says, deceptively casual. "I have lived my life miraculously free of guilt and second-guessing. It's a marvellous existence, quite cleansing, I do recommend it. Except that for the past few weeks I've been entirely unable to continue. Food tastes terrible, sleep is elusive, and while I'd very much like to blame it on substandard accommodations —" She blows out a breath. "President Snow deserves to burn, and his Capitol with it. For everything they've done to you, for the Ones, for Creed, for all our children. And yes, for every other person out in the districts suffering whom I've never given two shits about and whose problems I don't have a fucking clue. So, yes. I think I have to be there to help bring him down."

Nero gapes at her, but Callista only turns to him and smiles. It is not a nice smile; this is Callista the Butcher, who sliced open a boy in the Arena in the midst of the throes of passion. Nero sucks in a breath, discomforted to feel an odd shiver of the old attraction he thought he'd abandoned thirty years ago when Callista patted his cheek and said _oh no dear you're much too like a puppy_.

"And then I'm going to find that rebel president and make myself a new stole out of her intestines," Callista says pleasantly. "Murder _us_ , I thank you! As soon as we're done using her soldiers I'm going to tear her to pieces and feed them to my cats."

"That's the spirit," Nero says, wishing he could cover Enobaria's ears.

"Count your kills, darling," Callista says lightly, touching his shoulder in a brief brush of fingers. The contact takes on a strange significance in Nero's head; he has the odd thought, that tomorrow, next week, next year he'll still feel the ghost of her touch on his arm. He chases it away. "We'll all be comparing notes later."

"Battlefield, not playground," her mentor reminds her, and she threads her arm through Callista's and leads her toward the front.

* * *

They don't talk as they make their way through the city. No jokes, no banter, not even audio checks over their earpieces. The point scout at the front relays signals back via gestures and signals, and each person sends them back down the team in rapid succession in a matter of seconds. Quick, professional, and silent.

Claudius still can't believe they're really doing this. All the other missions, the recons, the supply runs, the extractions, everything he did with Selene and Dash and their team that led up to this, it all had a layer of separation. Get in, get out, keep a small footprint. It hadn't really felt like rebel activity, not really. Even sneaking into the mansion to spy on Petra, they'd never actually gone anywhere near President Snow.

This is really it. Years ago, young and angry and terrified, head stuffed full of questions and realizations he didn't really understand, Claudius had never really thought he'd get here. His thoughts of rebellion had never gotten much further than packing his bags and leaving with Lyme when they couldn't take pretending anymore, but here they are, fighting their way through the city on the way to his Games-damned front door.

It's as close to the Arena as Claudius has ever gotten.

They can't risk gunfire, not here, which means that every kill they make is hand to hand. Claudius has a pair of daggers as well as his rifle, and Lyme borrowed one of Nero's machetes while Brutus managed to scrounge up a spare sword. The others make do with clubs, knives and other non-ballistics weapons, but it's a messy business. There's a reason the strike team is almost entirely ex-Careers from Two and it's not because they don't trust the rebels from other districts. This might be war, but if the mission parameters involve fast, silent kills without the aid of guns, it only makes sense to send people who've done this before.

The first time Claudius sinks his daggers into an enemy it's a strange, unwelcome flood of memory and sensation. The kick of adrenaline, the rush of the kill — he shoves it back, refuses to ride the wave, to let it carry him. He grounds himself (take a breath, identify your surroundings, pick a point and focus on it), shakes the blood from his daggers and moves on.

They clear the area and keep going. Claudius catches Lyme looking at him, the ghost of concern flickering from her face, and he would be amused or annoyed or offended that she's checking up on him except that he'd just been doing the exact same thing to Selene, giving her a quick once-over to make sure her head's still in the game. But no, Selene looks pale but present, and she notices him staring and gives him the same _I'm fine Mom_ look he shot Lyme.

Almost there. This flashback-inducing killing can't be good for any of them, really, but either there will be time to sit down and untangle the psychological mess they're creating for themselves once they capture Snow or none of this will matter. The Arena has a wonderful way of burning away every extra, unimportant detail, distilling each action, each decision down to its essence. Claudius holds his daggers in an easy grip and follows Lyme deeper into the streets.

* * *

The streets stretch out ahead, eerie and empty, the various signs and billboards and outdoor fountains and holographic art displays shut down for the duration of the war. Adessa curls her lip as she pass them, empty shells that mark the Capitol's extravagance, monuments to the colossal waste of power it could no longer afford to keep up following the destruction of the primary hydroelectric plant.

Far away from this quiet, ridiculously opulent residential quarters, the main battle rages, but Adessa pays it no attention. She has her own quarry to stalk today, and her blades have already tasted blood today.

It sings in her veins, the old song, filling her like perfume, like the heady scent of lilacs on a warm spring night, like hot blood spilled on a sultry evening when the air sticks close and the sweat lingers. Adessa feels every beat of her heart like a pulse of fire in her chest, and she draws her briefcase close and strokes one finger over the silver clasp.

The house she seeks sits at the end of the cul-de-sac, overwhelming and ornate to the point of obscenity. Four stories, three pools, marble columns, holographic glass walls and a backyard mutt menagerie: the mansion of Lina Davenport, premier muttation designer, first-tier supporter of Coriolanus Snow, and Nero's number-one sponsor and self-styled "true love". A true love who had sunk her claws into Nero's shoulder on his Tour and used her influence to make Adessa's perfect, obedient Victor into the closest thing District 2 had to a sex slave.

All of Nero's other "lovers", all odious, love-struck, ludicrously wealthy women twice his age who'd preyed on him as soon as he was placed on the market, now lay dead in their homes, dismembered or dissected or any number of personalized horrors. Adessa had saved the best for last.

She'd been half afraid the old instincts would have rusted after so many years. It's been decades since Adessa's Arena, and unlike some of her more undisciplined colleagues, Adessa never took another life since stepping onto the hovercraft the day the trumpets played. But as it turns out, no matter how out of practice she feared she might have been, with the first slide of steel into skin, it all came rushing back.

She makes short work of Lina's outer security, using the codes she'd borrowed from Nero's files in the Victor Affairs office months ago. No minimalism here, Lina's house is as tacky and nausea-inducing inside as it is out: a disgusting, cacophonous display of wealth that ignores every rule of taste and class because Lina, like most of the Capitol, believes in overt shows of power and prosperity.

Adessa finds Lina downstairs, hiding in a panic room. This is a surprise, and breaking in affords Adessa with a pleasant mental challenge that actually distracts her from the low, rolling thoughts of murder as she matches wits with the state of the art system. If she hadn't been training for this for the past few years, ordering in various door locks and alarm systems and teaching herself how to master them in an elaborate fantasy sequence designed to maintain her sanity and burn off her rage, her revenge might well have stopped here.

But at last the door swings open, and Adessa sweeps through. Lina cowers in her richly decorated saferoom, clinging to her ridiculous custom designer mutt-hound and gasping for air behind several layers of cosmetic surgery. "Hello, Lina," Adessa says. She doesn't bother with speeches, only sets the briefcase on a low table and clicks it open in short, precise movements, allowing Lina to get a good look at the rows and rows of sharp, shining daggers nestled inside — and the blood-stained cleaning cloth tucked along with them.

To her credit, Lina doesn't scream, or shout, or try to run. She stares at Adessa with hatred burning in her eyes even as the fear locks her in place, as Adessa traces her fingers along her daggers and selects a few choice candidates. "You were always jealous," Lina spits out. "You never could accept what Nero and I have! You always wanted him to yourself! You could never admit that he loved me. That we had something special! You're going to try to make me admit it isn't true, that he never loved me, but I won't. I don't care what you do to me, I'll always know the truth!"

Adessa pauses, tilting her head to one side. She did indeed take that tack with a few of Nero's sillier, more fatuous abusers, the ones who weren't cruel so much as they were foolish and romantic. She'd enjoyed the moment of realization in their eyes, right before she slit their throats, the crushing defeat and horror as it sank in that Nero had not been a joyful, willing participant in their adventures. But no, Adessa thinks, watching Lina cuddle the chimeric monstrosity to her chest, she made her mark by supporting Coriolanus Snow in his rise to power, by rooting out his enemies and helping destroy their reputations, and her fortune by supplying first Gamemakers and then ordinary citizens with her unnatural creations.

No, Lina's delusion was of a different sort. She had convinced herself that she and Nero were one of a kind, but not because she thought it innocent and pure — but because she believed Nero to be like her.

"May it bring you comfort," Adessa says simply, and steps forward.

The only compliment Adessa will ever pay Lina Davenport is that it takes her much longer to die than Adessa would have given her credit for.

When it's over, Adessa cleans her knives on one of Lina's plush throws, packs everything away, and slips back out into the street, ignoring the distressed whining of the mutt-creature as the door closes behind her. It will have plenty to eat once it gets over itself, and pampered luxury creation or no, baser instincts are never far away.

* * *

Oh, how she missed this.

The gun is a poor substitute for her machetes, of course, crude and inelegant and distant, but the kickback shudders through Callista's arm and it's almost like the old days, swinging her weapons and slicing them through her opponents with nothing but sheer musculature and inertia to drive them through the mass of bone and muscle tissue. Now the bullets do the work but it's Callista who aims them, Callista's body that absorbs the aftershock, and the adrenaline still hits and the danger still thrills and she finds herself laughing all over again.

Hera will be worried about her, of course. Hera made her promise, years and years and years ago in the pouring rain, when Callista returned from an alleyway soaking wet, her clothes soaked with blood, half a dozen kittens stuffed under her shirt, that she could keep the cats but only if she never killed a human being ever again. Callista had weighed the value of the trade and her mentor's concern, and over the years she'd skirted as close to the line as medical intervention made it possible, but she'd never broken her vow until today.

Another soldier falls, and another, and another. She's not untouchable — Callista at eighteen thought so, buoyed by years of trainers filling her with confidence so she wouldn't peer too hard at the numbers, calculate her actual survival odds, but she is middle-aged now, and not so sanguine — but she is _unleashed_ , and that is a fearsome thing.

She counts her kills, just like she promised Nero, and funnily enough, that's where it all unravels.

It doesn't take long for Callista to outstrip every kill she made in training, not much longer for her to pass her Arena total. Soon she even flies past the number of her previous kills combined. It should be a source of pride, a measure of bragging rights, except —

A bullet flies past her head, buries itself in the building behind her and sends shrapnel scattering. Callista ducks, Hera beside her. Hera closes her eyes for a moment, breathing heavily, and she's sixty-two years old but she came with Callista because no one is allowed to fight alone and she wasn't about to let her Victor run into danger without her.

Callista takes a moment to catch her own breath, chagrined to admit she needs it. She's doubled her lifetime kill count in less than a day, and she should be proud except it rings hollow. In the moments when she pauses, to breathe or reload or dash to the next area of fighting, it all floods back: she's not fighting the people, she's fighting the cause. These are not opponents, trained to kill her in glorious, bloody, one-on-one combat. They are not criminals sent to kill her for their freedom. They're soldiers, trained for war, armed with guns and orders and here to do their jobs.

Killing doesn't have the same savour to it when the casualties number hundreds, thousands, and no one sees anyone's face. Callista tries to shake off the thought but can't, and finally she ducks around the corner to fire off a shot.

The soldier drops, a crumple of fatigues on the street. Callista takes a glancing hit to the arm, a stray bullet that doesn't enter her skin, and she's glad for it. It's not a dangerous injury, and the bite of pain sharpens her. She tears off a strip of sleeve, binds the wound, and moves on.

But it's too late. The battle glow has faded, replaced by the hard, grim slog of the third week in the Arena, and Callista curses herself — curses Hera, curses Nero, for their obvious terrible effects on her — for letting herself overthink it. Her first and only chance for unlimited murder in over thirty years, and she ruins it with moralizing?

Still, she has a job to do, and Callista is nothing if not devoted to her duty. They fight, sometimes alone, sometimes alongside rebel soldiers — sometimes theirs, sometimes District 13's, which makes Callista grit her teeth and wish she could shoot them all, but no, big picture, never turn on one's allies before it's strategic to do so — and hopefully they keep the attention and the focus off the mansion.

Through it all Hera keeps an eye on the map of the city traps, avoiding the triggers that would bring down the Arena-like machinations around their heads. Some of the notes are fairly benign or able to overcome provided there's enough warning or space to fight (lizard mutts, fire, spikes), but some (tar flood, magma, tidal wave) are impossible to escape or defeat.

They keep it up far longer for two women in their fifties and sixties would ever be expected, but at last Hera takes a hit to the knee and collapses to the ground in an explosion of cursing. "I'll be fine," she spits through gritted teeth. "But I think I'm through. Let's leave the rest of the fighting to the young bloods and find ourselves somewhere quiet to sit until it's over."

As there are no sponsors to charm for a parachute with bandages and pain medication, Callista is inclined to agree. She splints Hera's leg as best she can, checks the map for the location of the nearest emergency medical stash, and sets off.

Halfway there they're crossing a side street that intercuts the main thoroughfare leading to the mansion when Callista stops. "Wait," she says. Hera's hand clutches her sleeve, fingers tight with pain. "Do you feel that?"

Hera shakes her head, but given the pallour beneath her skin it's not likely she feels much. Callista leans her against a nearby fountain and bends down, splaying her fingers against the concrete in an unconscious parody of the gesture Nero used to do in the Arena to mess with his packmates when he pretended, silently, to be a master tracker.

Except this time it's not a joke. This time there's a steady rumble beneath Callista's fingers, and she leaves Hera for a moment to dart out and peer out through the buildings.

A line of artillery vehicles wheeling up the street in a line, headed straight for the thoroughfare. If they get there they'll ring the mansion and cut off the strike team, picking off anyone who attempts to enter.

The strike team has to get there first. It _must_. If the tanks arrive first, the chance for a surgical strike will be over, and the cost of life for taking the mansion will be so much higher.

Someone has to stop it.

No one else will get here in time.

Crouched on the ground, one hand pressed to the pavement, Callista starts to laugh.

"Hera," Callista calls out. Her head spins, a giddy blood rush. It's not funny. It's the funniest joke she's ever heard. "Is there a trap trigger in this area?"

There is.

A series of charges buried in the street ahead of them, quite devastating, meant to stop an incoming force intending to march on the Presidential mansion, with the trigger in the centre of the fountain. Of course, the original intent foresaw an invading force, not a rescue, but it serves their purpose well enough. The first wave brings a shockwave, disrupting any ground troops; the second, a wall of fire to finish the job.

The charges are set to detonate in a wave from the far end of the street, giving whoever activates them just enough time to get clear before the final set of explosions takes out the entire intersection. Assuming, of course, that whoever triggers the defence grid is a young, able-bodied soldier in her prime.

Callista locks gazes with Hera as they look up from the device. "Go," Hera says. "I'll stay, I'm the one who can't run. One of us should make it out."

It makes sense. It's simple math, good Arena logic; why should two people die when one can survive? Why should Callista die when she earned the right to be immortal?

Callista glares at her mentor and snatches the device from her hand. "Don't be stupid," she snaps. "I'm a murderer again. Who's going to control me if you're not here?"

She helps Hera into the fountain, and together they find the switch hidden in the centre. The tanks are rumbling down the street now, well within the range of the traps. Callista shares one long look with Hera, takes several gulping breaths, and presses down on the switch.

The first explosion rocks the street, sending the back row of tanks flying onto its side. Callista laughs and bares her teeth at the ensuing ball of smoke and fire.

They call the city and its traps the 76th Arena. If it really were, Callista thinks, there would be cameras everywhere and an audience of millions glued to their screens to watch her heroic sacrifice. As the explosions draw nearer, the best she can hope for is that the bowl of the fountain shields her, that there's enough left of her for someone to find and bury.

Hera's hand finds hers, fingers squeezing tight as the explosions draw near. "I regret nothing," she says, voice thin with pain but nevertheless determined. She always did commit, even to a Victor far more blood- and sex-crazed than she could possibly have imagined when looking at the files in black and white.

"That's sweet," Callista says, resting her head on her mentor's shoulder. One more to go now. In the distance the air flickers; she thinks she can see the first wave of flames. She refuses to close her eyes. "I have quite the list."

* * *

They get all the way to Snow's front door, then Rigel sucks in a breath because the four white-armoured guards standing there are his friends.

They're wearing half-helmets and gleaming armour, and they're standing in a row like they're an honour guard on parade instead of in a defensive matrix. It throws the rebels enough that they advance cautiously — he hears Lyme in his earpiece, telling them to beware a trap — and they sneak closer instead of storming the gates.

But Rigel knows why they've done it. They're here for him.

For all their sneaking, for all they managed to beat Coin's forces and make it to the mansion first, the Scouts had to know Rigel would be coming, and this time they're prepared. This won't be a Brin situation. It won't even be Troy. Arcturus won't offer them a pardon, not when they've fought their way up to Snow's damned doorstep. Never mind that he and Rigel were squadmates for three years. Never mind that they're _friends_. Arcturus will still shoot Rigel through the head if given half a chance, and he'll have ordered his squad to do the same.

(Of course he will. Rigel can still see Troy's helmet exploding in a mess of bone and blood as Selene's bullet blew his skull apart.)

The most Rigel can hope for is that Arcturus doesn't fight dirty — but then the door opens and another armoured figure steps through, and Rigel's stomach plummets because it's Emin.

The Scouts rotate a lot. They're deployed in squads of four, two partnered pairs, and that's how they operate, but assignments rarely last for more than a couple of years. Rigel and Marius were juniors together back in the day and they're partners now, but they've only worked the same squad for maybe half their careers. Rumour has it Snow doesn't like to leave squads together for too long in case they start to be loyal to each other instead of to him.

Given that Rigel's squad followed him into rebellion, he's not sure he can argue against that one.

But the trouble is, while it might work for most squad assignments — Rigel will absolutely shoot Arcturus even if he feels bad about it later — you will always bear some extra loyalty to your first commander, it's human nature.

Rigel's first commander just stepped out of the mansion.

Beside him, Marius exhales a quiet curse. He and Emin weren't so close, he got along better with her partner Galen, but it's still — still.

Everything goes very quiet and very loud all at once. Rigel hears Lyme in his ear but the words don't register. He asks himself but can't answer: he doesn't know if he can bring himself to shoot the woman who made him hot chocolate on winter days, who showed him how to strap his gear down so it was both secure and comfortable to sleep in on long haul missions, who taught him how to divide things in his mind so he could do his duty and still retain his humanity. Emin is the kind of Peacekeeer Rigel has always wanted to be. He's based his entire career on following in her footsteps.

What's worse is that her very presence here — Arcturus' presence — is Emin all over. She is the commander of the Scouts, a position she's held for the last two years even though she's not the most senior, because she's smart and driven and, above all, loyal. If Snow could trust anyone to watch over him as he slept, it would be Emin. But Emin's gift is not that she's good at fighting (although she is), or that she's smart (although she is): it's that she is an absolutely fantastic judge of character. She gave Rigel his squad; she gave him Marius as his second; and now she has arranged Snow's defence in exactly the manner that will unsettle him the most, make him hesitate.

She's using herself as a human shield, and Rigel is as impressed as he is heartbroken.

Emin exchanges a quiet word with Arcturus. Her gaze sweeps the perimeter, and Rigel knows she can't see him in his hiding spot but somehow her gaze pierces him anyway.

For the first time since beginning this whole misbegotten operation, Rigel is glad that, for once, he's not the one in charge. "Thoughts?" Lyme's voice finally registers in his earpiece.

"It's a message," Rigel murmurs back. That's the one thing Emin doesn't know; Rigel has led the other missions where they've run into the Scouts, but this time he's just the local expert. "They know we're coming, they know who we are. They're waiting for us."

"Waiting for you," Marius says from his side, quiet so it won't carry over to Lyme. "Rigel —"

"Quiet," Rigel says, aside. "Not now." Tapping his earpiece again, he continues. "This won't be the only line of defence, just the obvious one. Be careful of traps."

"All right," Lyme says, oblivious to the side conversation. "Form up, let's go."

He's right. They don't bother talking, and it is a trap.

Their advance must trip an invisible sensor, because the moment they cross into effective rifle range the four guards raise their weapons to their shoulders and fire into the night.

And they shouldn't be able to see them, but the first salvo catches Rigel right in the shoulder.

"Get down!" He yells over the comm, diving for the ground. Marius grabs him and hauls him behind cover. The motion jars his shoulder, and Rigel bites back a yell. It's not lethal, not even debilitating thanks to his armour, but damn if it doesn't hurt like hell.

Distantly he hears Lyme give the order to open fire. He clicks the safety off —

— And Vance's head explodes, an echo of Troy's all over again, but without the faceplate to give them a semblance of detachment.

Selene, of course. Rigel's heart sinks. He never wanted this, bringing his kids into the rebellion to kill their friends and colleagues, undoing all Selene's detox training only to fling her right back into close-quarters murder. He'd sent Dash and Selene back to be long-ranged support when they got close to the mansion in an effort to protect them, but that just means she'd had her sights trained on the four guards since the beginning. Rigel doesn't like the toll it's taking on her, whatever good her sessions with Claudius have done her.

The other three dive behind cover — but not good enough, as a rebel soldier rears back and hurls a grenade at the front door. The resulting explosion takes out the pillar, and shots from a dozen rifles take care of the rest. In seconds, it's done.

Rigel doesn't know if his bullets were the ones to kill Arcturus. He doesn't want to know — and yet, he does. Perhaps this is what it feels like ot be in a firing squad.

"Let's go!" Lyme shouts, and yes, that's good, press the advantage —

"You're hit," Marius snaps at him when Rigel makes to move up with the rest.

"I'll live." Rigel shakes off Marius' hand. "You heard the commander. Lene, Dash, pack it up and get over here, we're going in."

"Yessir!"

There's no sign of Emin as they stampede up the porch stairs and through the narrow doorway. Rigel's mind screams _bottleneck_ as they force their way through the hole, enlarged by the grenade explosion but still small, too small. And yes — the first two rebels through the door fall immediately, victims of the second line of guards posted up the stairs in the antechamber. Without speaking, Rigel and Marius take cover on opposite sides of the entrance and fire: two more Scouts fall.

Still no sign of Emin. Where is she?

But there's no time to think. Lyme leads them on the bloodiest, most brutal house-cleaning Rigel has ever been on outside of floor exercises; Snow's mansion is all narrow corridors or wide, sweeping chambers, both of which are absolute murder on any attackers. The one advantage they have is prior access to the floorplan, their previous recon missions, and that Lyme and Brutus also remember the layout from various post-Games parties.

It's a cold comfort to the fallen, but they at least aren't losing as many as they would otherwise.

Rigel takes another hit — to the leg this time, and at close range even pistol fire hurts like a bitch — and there's a close call when Hector and Ella manage to jump them from behind a hidden door. Ella manages to get a blade into Marius's side, sliding it through a gap in his armour like the master knife-fighter she is, before Rigel shoots her. Someone else gets Hector.

It's Dash. He and Selene have caught up.

"I'm fine, just a scratch," Marius snaps, waving off the juniors' concerned questions. He's bleeding, but not badly; he pulls off his spare ammo bandolier and wraps it around the gash, cinching it tight. Rigel meets his eyes, and Marius nods; worse than he's saying, but not just bravado either. "Keep moving."

They split up again when they reach Snow's indoor courtyard. As soon as Lyme calls the first floor clear, Rigel sends Selene and Dash up to the balcony to set up again. Selene immediately starts to protest, but Rigel silences her with a look. Her rifle is useless in the corridors, and while she's made good use of her pistol, that's not the best use of her skulls and she knows it. Rigel lingers long enough to see Dash boost her up a nearby tree, then turns to move up.

On the far side, near the greenhouse, Rigel runs into Emin again.

She's not alone this time either. She has another pair of Scouts with her: Kris and Ted, a couple years below them, and when he was a junior Ted used to follow them both around like a puppy, and Kris was Marius' partner before their current assignment.

Emin meets Rigel's eyes, and Rigel cannot fire.

"I thought I might see you here," Emin calls, and she sounds incongruously amused and resigned, as if she's caught Rigel sneaking back into base with a hangover and not attacking President Fucking Snow's mansion.

He cannot do this. He needs to do this. He _must_.

"Been a while," Rigel shoots back around the tightness in his throat.

"It has," Emin acknowledges with a nod. The look in her eyes is … sad. "You've changed, Rigel."

"I —" _I haven't changed, the world changed,_ Rigel starts to say, but then he sees the muscles in Emin's shoulder tense — as if she's firing, but why would she fire — _she's firing on_ you _, idiot_ —

Rigel throws himself aside, but it's too late —

He sees the muzzle flash and then —

* * *

Marius should have made Rigel stay behind.

The thought runs through his mind, drowning out all else, as he dives behind cover. He should have made Rigel stay. Rigel was compromised as hell, it was obvious from the start and from the way he drove them forward like it hurt to stop moving. Marius would even have had a good reason; first his shoulder injury, and then his leg. He should have made Rigel stop.

Emin is still just standing there, gun arm outstretched, but that won't last; at any moment now she'll turn to him —

So Marius shoots her first.

It's not even a conscious decision, not really. Perhaps Marius wouldn't have been able to do it if it had been. But it's almost — spinal reflex, just like how his arm twitches to the right and pulls the trigger and Ted goes down too.

The _crack_ of a sniper rifle echoes off the walls, and Kris falls. Poor bastard must have leapt too far out from behind the greenhouse when he dove for cover; he never did have very good situational awareness, never stopped to consider other angles of attack —

For a moment the courtyard rings with silence.

Marius lurches out of cover and all but collapses by Rigel's side. He reaches out to roll him over, but stops himself because it won't help. Blood, too much blood, spilling onto the stone, and it's no good, he knows it's no good, nobody survives being shot in the fucking _throat_ like that. It's no good, he's so still, and yet —

(Emin has always been an incredibly quick draw, smooth as silk; she used to challenge the kids and laugh. She used to teach him and Rigel.)

His brother is dead, killed by his commander, now dead by Marius's hand. He told Selene this would all be worth it. Marius would really, really like that part to be now.

There's the rhythmic thump of booted feet — running — Marius heaves himself to his feet as Dash rounds the corner, followed closely by Selene. Selene's eyes are dark with helpless fury; she must have seen some of it from behind her scope even if she didn't have a shot. And Dash — Dash is —

Dash has always worn his heart on his sleeve, and over the last few months Marius has seen that take its toll, but this is the first time Marius has seen Dash in legitimate danger of shattering.

Marius can't do a thing about it, not when he's only barely holding it together himself, and any kindness now — any softness at all — will just tear them both to pieces. Not in the middle of a pitched battle where any distraction at all could mean their deaths. But what he can do is give him direction, purpose, a target.

He's the squad leader now.

"This ends when we find Snow," Marius announces grimly. "We need the president alive, but only him. Take out anything that stands in our way."

Selene blows out a breath and grins, and it's wild and angry and Marius will deeply regret this later but it's not her he's worried about right now. Dash meets his eyes, and Marius sees his own grief reflected in the boy's gaze — grief and rage, destructive in its strength. But unlike Marius, Dash will turn his inward unless it finds another outlet. If nothing else, Marius can give him that.

"Yes, sir," Dash says, and Marius nods.

Time to hunt.

* * *

Dash never seriously thought any of them would die.

It sounds really stupid when he thinks about it. It's a war, people die, people have _been_ dying, he's killed them himself, good people, and even before the war Dash was no stranger to death. Hell, his parents are dead. He knows people die.

He just — somehow — thought that all four of them make it out the other side.

He trails Marius and Selene on automatic, bringing up the rear as they sweep through the greenhouse to Snow's private office. Lyme and Claudius and a few others enter from the other side, and Dash isn't paying a whole lot of attention but he does notice Claudius freeze when he counts three and not four.

There's no time, so Dash shoves it out of his mind. Later. He'll think about it later.

The back door to Snow's private rooms is locked and armoured. This is something they discussed in planning, and yes — Marius gestures him forward, and Dash pulls out his kit and gets to work. Within two minutes he's set it up and shoos everyone back, and with a flick of a switch he blows the door open.

It's a textbook job, clean and professional, but it doesn't make him feel any better. A little bit, maybe, but it's like trying to staunch a flood with a washcloth.

The others storm through first into a hail of fire.

Snow's defenders aren't a stupid bunch, all told, but neither are the rebels. The ones in front dive aside or to the floor, and the ones behind, Dash included, fire over their heads; someone chucks a grenade in, and the explosion deafens them all.

When the smoke clears, another three rebels are dead, but so are the Scouts.

And in the next room —

"We have Snow," Lyme announces, grim and victorious. Even through his haze of grief and rage, Dash has enough presence of mind to be grateful that he isn't the president, staring down the barrel of the Victor's gun right now.

Dash has a few seconds to ride the short high of victory before the rest crashes into him. They have President Snow in custody but the rest of the city is still fighting — and Rigel is dead and leaking out onto the courtyard. Suddenly it hurts to breathe.

"Come on," Marius says, shaking him by the shoulder. "It's not over yet."


	12. Chapter 12

They've been fighting all night.

Devon trained for eleven years to win the Hunger Games. He killed five people in training and seven in the Arena and it took him a year of recovery to work past the phantom blood on his hands and the faces in his dreams. A few hours into the assault on the Capitol and he left those numbers far behind, though at least he didn't have to kiss them first.

This is nothing like the Arena.

It's chaos: people running, shouting, explosions and chunks of building flying everywhere, right away the scale is so much bigger, like those first frenzied moments at the Cornucopia magnified and stretched to last a whole day. In the Arena it's also focused, contained, every aspect is controlled and every variable accounted for by Gamemakers, mentors, savvy tributes, and there's one clear objective. In the Arena all players have the same goal: survive, whatever the cost, and anything else that breathes is a target, no questions asked.

Here, the sound of gunfire drives civilians shrieking into the streets despite the clear orders from all sides to stay inside; here they have two tiers of enemies, people to take alive and people to shoot on sight. Here the concept of 'ally' doesn't mean 'someone you agree not to kill for now', here there are consequences for killing the wrong person. Here there are consequences, period; there is no carte blanche understanding that all actions are forgiven for who ever makes it out. Here you fight alongside friends and try to remember in the heat of the fight when your brain screams _kill kill kill survive_ which uniforms mean _shoot_ and which mean _stop_ and every second of hesitation could mean someone dead who shouldn't be or someone got away who's meant to die.

Like the rest of the Twos, Devon and the others got only a handful of training and that's it. Unlike civilians, no one had to prep them for the possibility of taking lives, and they already know basic tactics and how to take orders. Hand them a rifle, show them how to assemble and reload, practice a few rounds to get the aim right. They're used to picking up new skills, and the three of them got their firearms rating the same afternoon and that was that. Their orders now are to keep the ground squads occupied and away from the presidential mansion long enough that Lyme's team can carry out her mission, and hopefully not martyr themselves in the meantime.

A soldier darts out from behind a barricade; the flash of a streetlight on a scope draws Devon's attention before he really tracks the movement, and he knocks Emory out of the way to fire. The soldier drops, bleeding onto the concrete. Emory whirls on him, sharp and savage, every trace of the humble-proud quarry girl who brought him cookies vanished. "We are not competing," she reprimands him. Her blonde hair shines black in the orange light, stained from the blood of a man she killed point-blank range when they turned a corner. "If one of us has a clean shot, we let them take it. No scores, remember?"

"Sorry." Devon swallows acid and scrubs a hand over his face. "I — teamwork, not used to it."

"Get used to it," Emory said, giving him a hard look. "This is war."

Emory had deferred to the boys in her Arena, rather than jockeying for pack leader with too many strong personalities in play. Now as Devon follows her without hesitation, he can't help but see an alternate past for her in this hard-edged, matter-of-fact soldier she never got to use. On his other side, Misha holds her rifle in her left hand and reaches over to grip Devon's neck, fingers sliding in the grime and sweat. They're a Career Pack spread out across a decade, fighting a battle they never thought they'd join that has no victory trumpets waiting at the end.

Movement to the side — Misha whirls, raises her weapon — but no, that's a grey uniform, the sunrise crest on the sleeve, and Devon hisses a breath. "Friendly!" he yells, and Misha curses and yanks her arm to the side. The shot goes wide, the bullet sending flecks of concrete flying as it embeds in the corner of a building. The rebel soldier disappears into a side alley.

"Fuck," Misha mutters. "Fuck!"

"Hey," Emory says, harsh but comforting all at once, and Misha's shoulders drop. "Focus. You've got this."

"We shouldn't be here," Misha says, voice skittering sideways, not quite into recovery-dissociating territory but close. Devon winces; they do not have time for this, not with bullets flying and the city on fire, and worse, he's only as sane as the rest of them — if Misha goes, so will he. "This whole plan sounded like a good idea at the time, everyone knows I'm not afraid of anything, but that was when I only had to worry about me. Now there's you, and Lyme, and Callista, and can't lose any of you —"

"Hey!" Emory says again. She gestures to Devon, who covers them while she grabs Misha and pulls her close, gripping her face with her free hand and pressing their foreheads together. Misha was always a little bit in love with Emory, Devon knows that, and right now he is one hundred percent fine with it if Emory can use it to bring his girl back. "There won't be anybody unless we win this, so stay with me. You were always fearless. Now you gotta be brave, that's all. Yeah?"

"Yeah." Misha sucks in a breath and closes her eyes, and when she opens them again her gaze is hard. "I'm fine. Got it." She rubs her eyes with the back of her wrist, but Devon isn't going to judge. He's been tasting bile all night. "Don't tell Lyme."

Emory claps the side of her face. "Nothing to tell except good things," she says, and the best part about Emory is that Devon knows she means it. "Let's keep going."

Misha nods, shouldering her rifle, and Emory looks back down at the tracker device she carries as their de facto squad commander. "Section looks clear," she says as the screen comes up empty, both of traps and of any blips from the trackers in Peacekeeper-issue rifles, though that's not always reliable. Some of the Peacekeeper units started pulling theirs out after a few too many successful ambushes. "Keep an eye out."

They head out but Devon's throat squeezes. He can't explain it but it's there, lurking around corners and pressing on his back. "I have a bad feeling."

"This whole place is a bad feeling," Emory says, not turning. "Keep your head on, I promised our mentors you'd both walk out of here with me and you will."

"Yeah, I am, I just —"

"Don't you fucking dare," Misha says, her words almost a snarl. "I hear a just-in-case-we-die speech brewing if we'd ever heard one." She turns to glare at him. "Try it and I'll knock you unconscious and drag you through the streets myself."

"She's right." Emory gives Devon a long look. "We didn't do goodbyes with our mentors and we're not doing it now. We'll get through this, as long as you don't lose your mind on me. I really don't want to have to explain to Brutus that you went full third-week Arena on the battlefield. Okay?"

The feeling doesn't leave; it creeps along behind him, skulking at the edges of his vision like the shivering insanity that stalked him in the Arena, always a step or two behind. But Devon beat it then and he'll beat it now, and he only has to do this for a day. A day filled with far more death and danger than anything his Arena ever offered him, but it beats three weeks of slow starvation and exposure and constant hypervigilance. He can do this. "I'm fine," he says, gripping his rifle and wishing, not for the first time, that he had a good, honest polearm instead.

They move through the streets, Emory with one eye on the scanner, Misha and Devon on either side keeping watch. "Squad ahead," Emory says finally as they cross over into a new red zone. "Too big for us to take on our own, but it'll take too long to go around and we'll hit a bigger one on the detour anyway." She turns to Devon, gives him a friendly shake on the shoulder. "Your turn, brown eyes. Give 'em all you've got."

Devon heaves in a breath and forces it out. It's worked before: more than one squad of formerly-loyalist Peacekeepers now wear fight for the rebels because Devon convinced them to turn, but how much luck can he possibly have? Except there's really only one answer to that question. "Misha, you got my back?" She's the best fighter of all of them, and she's his girl and there's no one he'd rather have protecting him.

"Always," she says, and there are no goodbyes or mushy speeches but she does pull him in for a hard kiss. Then she slips away, heaves herself up onto a broken balcony and flattens herself against the metal, disappearing into the shadows.

"If they don't go for it, we won't have much time, but try to run," Emory says in a low voice as they sidestep a pile of rubble. "Never mind cowardice."

"I'll run if you run," Devon shoots back. His win might have been low on kills with clean merciful deaths, but nobody spent twenty years hounding him with the shadow of a default win. Of the two of them, he's not the one more likely to do something stupid out of the desire to prove themselves.

Emory shoots him a look, unreadable in the darkness, but then she snorts. "Fine," she mutters, then raises her voice. "District 2 Victors, hold your fire!"

Odds are, a squad that size will have at least a few Two ex-Careers in it. "Bullshit," one of them yells back, an ha, Devon recognizes the twist of the last of a quarry accent, long suppressed but returning under stress. "Traitors burned the Village to the ground!"

"A ploy to get us out safe," Devon calls out, because that's better than trying to explain the long version. "It's V52 and 60, and we're armed but we aren't shooting for the next two minutes. Can you give us two minutes?"

A pause, incongruous in the middle of all the death and gunfire, then the voice says, "Two minutes."

Devon steps clear of the barrier and finds a halo of a street lamp, hands raised, Emory joining him at his side. A handful of Peacekeepers stand, wary with their weapons ready, and come forward into the light. Most of them have their helmets on, but a few have lost theirs, and the rest flip their visors up. "So," says the young man in the middle, brown-haired and freckled, face twisted with idealism turned sour. "Alive and traitors. I think I liked you better dead."

Emory says nothing as Devon searches his memory, rifling through the cards in his mental library with frantic urgency because he knows this, everything depends on him — "Tom," he says finally, pushing back the gasping relief. "I haven't seen you since … 65? 66? How's your mother?"

The young man — in his twenties now, but just a kid when Devon saw him last, twelve years old with a pen and paper thrust in his face for an autograph — flinches back. "Don't," warns another, likely his commanding officer. "It's a trick."

"It's not a trick," Devon says, making his voice calm, soothing. He kissed a boy and slit his throat with this voice, but today maybe he can save some lives. "I came to your school for a recruitment drive. You were in the Program, about to take your Residential exam, but you weren't sure you wanted to be a Volunteer. You said you didn't know if you could kill a tribute. Do you remember what I told you?"

Tom's hands tighten on his weapon. His throat bobs. "You told me I could always be a Peacekeeper. You told me anyone I killed, I'd know they deserved it."

"That's right." Devon wants to wet his lips — his whole mouth, his throat, feels dry as fire — but he can't show hesitation, not now. He keeps his hands raised. "I meant what I said. I thought I understood, but I was wrong. We were all wrong. Nobody here deserves to die. It's all a big mess."

Beside him, Emory takes slow, measured breaths. Devon's head spikes with pain, as though an invisible opponent is driving a dagger through his eye socket so it comes out the back of his skull. "Listen to me," he continues. "We don't want to tear anything down. We want to build. You have to know this isn't right, none of this is. People are dying, too many people. There won't be anyone left if this keeps up. We need to stop fighting and fix the country that all of us loved so much we were willing to die for."

The commanding officer steps forward, eyes narrowed, and pulls off her helmet. Devon's heart hammers. If the commander falls, the squad will follow; he sees the way they look at her, fear and anticipation and adoration. No one reaches for their weapons, fingers itching for the trigger. They won't shoot her if she turns. She turns to Devon, stares at him with her chin raised. "You got lucky once. Can you do it again?"

Shit. She's older, this one, which makes it harder, more distance between his memory and the person in front of him. Devon's brain spins and spins and spins before he finds it. "Sarah," he says, sagging with relief even as he holds himself perfectly steady on the outside. Her eyes snap wide. All those hours and hours of logging every interaction, civilian and ex-Career alike, worth every late night and migraine. "You didn't want to leave your sister. You were worried what would happen to her if you volunteered and didn't walk out."

"Fuck," Sarah mutters. Whispering spreads through the rest of her squad.

"This is what I'm talking about," Devon says, taking a step forward. One or two fingers tighten but nobody brings their weapons to bear. "I know you. I _am_ you. It doesn't have to be like this. All of us — Victors, Peacekeepers — we did what we did because we love this country. I'm here now, on the other side, for the same reason. I'm not asking you to surrender. I'm asking you to join me. Make things right."

Nobody moves, and so Devon risks it: he lifts his foot for one more step. "Wait, don't!" Tom shouts, anguished. Devon stumbles, but it's too late — he already committed, and he tries to change his stride midair but the ground is unsteady, debris and wreckage strewn everywhere, and his boot drops on the only clear patch of ground.

A pause — a click — and then — an earthquake.

No. Earthquakes don't bite, don't have jaws that snap over his legs and clamp down on his thighs and tear through bone. Earthquakes don't fling him through the air and slam him into the wall. Then it's over and it doesn't matter what it was, now there's fire and pain and blood and ringing in his ears, blood on his fingers where he touches his face, blood in his vision and blood on the ground.

And then — silence. Silence and ringing at the same time, roaring and deafening, and nausea, the smell of dust and smoke and vomit. The churn and crumple of his own stomach as he heaves — his vomit, he's vomiting — and blood, even more blood, more blood than he's ever seen outside the Arena. Everything spins. There's a blanket on the ground, a black blanket, black and rippling in the streetlights, covering his legs and shimmying down onto the concrete.

Silence and ringing and blood and spinning and Emory, crumpled and pale and lying on the street. She's not moving, why isn't he moving, he should help her. He tries to stand, to throw himself onto his side to get to her but it's not working, his legs aren't listening — why aren't they _listening_ — and that's not a blanket, it's not a blanket at all, it's —

— _black_.

* * *

Artemisia vaults the balcony and hits the ground as the explosion settles, the years of training that drilled her never to jump with an unsheathed sword reminding her to sling her rifle over her back. Her knees jar from the impact — sloppy, didn't bend enough — but she barely notices, not like it matters when Devon is a mess of blood and bone and bits of tissue everywhere, mouth open and gaping like a fish. The growing pool of blood on the pavement draws Artemisia's gaze down his torso, where —

(Here's a riddle, what do you call a leg when it's not a leg, what do you call a leg when it's blown off to the knee and there's bits on the ground and stuck to the wall, what do you call a leg when it's nothing but gristle and muscle and peeling skin and blood, so much blood)

Emory lies on the ground nearby, skin pale and clammy in the weak orange lamplight, eyes blank and rolled back into her head. She's splashed with blood but it's wrong, it's on her clothes soaking in towards her skin and not the other way around because that's Devon's blood, not hers. The only blood that's her own is a trickle from her nose and the corner of her mouth, and that would be a good thing except for the huge dent in the side of her skull, and no, oh no, no no no _no_ —

(Prioritize. Mentors prioritize. Devon is bleeding out fast but he's still here, still holding on, eyes clear and hands scrabbling at the ground. Emory is gone, blank-faced and empty-gazed and gone, not yet but she will be soon, Artemisia has seen this one too many times from the mentor seat. And this is what mentors do, they choose, one lives and one dies, no two tributes ever walk out alive, Misha you have to _choose_ —)

Artemisia rips off her jacket and ties it around the stump of Devon's left leg, the grey material soaked black-red in seconds. No, no he won't die like this, not here, but there are no Gamemakers and no sponsors floating above her with bandages and shock treatment waiting with their fingers hovering over a button. She puts all her weight across his thighs, slippery and hot and sickening, and her brain helpfully supplies a memory of Six boy's guts tumbling, pale pink and grey and brown and red, sliding out over the ground.

The squad of Peacekeepers who let Devon step on a fucking landmine (no wonder they were so calm about letting a pair of armed Victors stroll right up to them) stare at them from behind their barrier, frozen, and for an awful second Artemisia thinks they're going to stand there and watch.

A scream builds up inside her — she's not Devon or Emory, she has no inspiring words of hope and unity that will convince them to rally together and join her — but then the commander curses. She grabs a pack from their pile of supplies and vaults across the barricade. "He'll probably die anyway," she says, matter of fact, and in that second she has no idea how close she is to Artemisia pulling an Enobaria and ripping out her throat. Except that to kill the Peacekeeper she would have to let go of Devon, and if she lets go he really is dead. "But we'll do what we can."

"There's a hospital," adds one of them, as he pulls out a pressure-sealing bandage and slaps it onto the mess. "It's skeleton-staffed after the evacuation. We're keeping it open for our people, but —"

"He fucking is _your people_ ," Artemisia grits out through clenched teeth. "That was his whole point."

They work in grim-faced silence, and the bandages keep coming and the blood keeps pumping, but finally a bit of white cloth stays, and then some more. Artemisia can barely breathe or see; all she knows is Devon's hands in hers, fingers nearly slipping through her grip.

"Misha …" Devon's mouth is dark and wet and red, and she turns to glare at him.

"Whatever you're going to say, fuck you," Artemisia snaps. He laughs, rattling and horrible, and drops his head back down onto her lap, but he's still here. Still here.

"This isn't … I signed up to protect people, not fight a war," mutters one of the others to a comrade. "How many people have we killed by now? And not — nobody said we'd have to kill _Devon_. He — he sent my dad a get well card when he got out of surgery, and I only met him one time. I don't even remember mentioning my dad, but I must've. This isn't why I took the oath."

"You asshole," Artemisia says in a low voice, leaning down and resting her forehead against Devon's. "If it were me, they probably would've let me bleed. Lucky for us our whole district is in love with you."

"Emory —" Devon chokes, coughs, and Artemisia turns his head so he can spew blood and saliva onto her lap and try again. "Emory, she's — she's —"

"No cannon yet," Artemisia says out of habit, then hisses and closes her eyes. Fuck. _Fuck_!

"Still alive," calls out one of the Peacekeepers. They haven't moved her except to turn her on her side, gingerly. He crouches next to her, two fingers pressed with incongruous gentleness to the underside of her jaw. "For now. If V60 is stable we need to move them right away."

They turn to the squad commander, kneeling at Devon's side, arms bloodied to the elbows. She's the oldest of them but still young: younger than Lyme, maybe even younger than Artemisia herself. "Let's do it," she says. "The faster we get them to medical the sooner we can join the fight." She meets Artemisia's gaze, holds it for several seconds. "Consider us convinced."

"Misha —!" Devon's words peel off into a scream as they lift him, and oh fuck she's crying and can't stop crying, maybe she'll never stop crying ever again. He grips her arm until his fingers leave crescent marks against her skin. "Go," he gasps. "Fight."

"I'm not leaving you!"

"Go," Devon insists, eyes glassy. "No trumpets means …"

"… we haven't won," Artemisia finishes, and she hisses out a breath. "Okay, fine, but I need weapons." A few of the Peacekeepers pass her over new guns, a medpack, even a short knife, and Artemisia straps everything on and stows the extra clip at her waist. It's stupid, but the knife settles her, brings her back a little more to herself. "I'm going to burn this place to the ground for you," she tells him, and kisses him.

She kneels down next to Emory — still unmoving, eyes still open, vacant — and does the same to her. And now Artemisia is alone, returning to the war zone without backup, but if the last taste in her mouth is blood and salt and dirt, so be it. They were born in blood and if they die in blood it will not — it _will not_ — be in vain.

Artemisia picks up Emory's scanner, cracked but functioning, and stalks deeper into the red zone.

It's easier now, in a way. No friends, no distractions, no qualms. Only Artemisia, her weapons, and the streets. She turns a Peacekeeping squad: not with her faith and conviction, but with her rage. She kills another pair when they refuse. She murders an entire cohort of Coin's people when they recognize her and reach for their comms because they can't know the Victors are here, not yet; she fires into a nearby trap trigger and lets the city take them. She swallows the guilt, letting Devon's mangled body and Emory's unseeing eyes spur her forward. She repeats the Victor's promise even as she laughs at its hollowness: _this will all be worth it when you win._

Artemisia will say one thing for Peacekeepers: the stim shots they packed in their medkits carry one hell of a punch, as good as anything the best sponsor funds could ever buy. When the anger burns off and exhaustion bleeds through she jams herself with a cocktail of Snow only knows what, and the shock of it snaps her eyes wide and pushes a spring into her step, holy shit. All of the kick of Callista's special drugs and none of the sparkle, and Artemisia picks up the pace with renewed vigour.

The drugs even make her forget the pain from the stray bullet and sprays of shrapnel she's taken, which on one hand is stupid — pain is a useful signal, it tells a smart person where their limits are — but on the other, she doesn't have time for smart, not now, and what she needs is a clear head. Artemisia takes a minute to rest in the cover of an abandoned frippery store (candles for pets, according to the signs, specially designed to calm and soothe, with flames that won't singe the fur of any animal bred through their subsidiary company) when an alert comes through her radio.

Artemisia's heart leaps at the sound of Lyme's voice: still alive, at least for now, if still tense and clipped. They've taken the mansion and captured Snow, but can't risk making an announcement until they have him safely secured. Combat victors and support units have their next assignment: move to the rendezvous point and wait for the signal for the second phase.

The rendezvous point is far from Artemisia's position, but when she checks her scanner, her path would take her mostly through cleared zones. For the first time since leaving Devon and Emory behind, Artemisia hesitates. She could pretend she didn't understand the order; pretend she's otherwise engaged, or that she lost her radio and didn't get the message, or that she's in the middle of a hot zone and couldn't get there safely. She could do a dozen things that aren't head back to the rendezvous where Lyme and Brutus will be waiting, ready to ask her why she's there alone.

For a minute Artemisia almost does it. She could go back to the hospital and wait there, get confirmation that they're all right (or not), sit out the rest of the fight at their bedsides and radio in once it's all over. Better than showing up with dubious information, having to tell their mentors that the last she saw of them they were unconscious or screaming and bleeding onto the streets —

Artemisia looks back over her shoulder at the path to the hospital, then turns away. "This is all you, Devon," she says aloud, glaring at the sky as she heads out in the direction of the rendezvous. "I'm only doing this because I know your stupid face would be disappointed if I went back now."

No points for acting there, but there are no cameras and no trainers scoring her mistakes, so it hardly matters. Artemisia wraps herself in the memory of Lyme's voice, alive and strong, and fades into the alley.

* * *

Throughout her younger years, Lyme had a whole speech planned out for the day she faced Coriolanus Snow one-on-one and lay her blade edge-on across his throat. She wrote and revised endless versions of it on nights when sleep eluded her, perfecting each barb and savage turn of phrase until the country's best propo teams could not hope to improve on it. Her words would leave him defensive, angered, humbled, and finally, once he looked her in the eye, afraid.

By the time Lyme's team breaches the president's door, she's seen good people die, soldiers and children all along the spectrum of guilt and culpability. She's stood in the middle of a country tearing itself apart and realized that its problems lay far deeper than one man with poison ulcers and breath that stank of blood. The satisfaction she'd imagined at the thought of driving her blade into his neck lies long out of reach, buried somewhere with the thousands of dead civilians and Cato's chewed-up corpse and the looming shadow of the coming winter.

In the end, Lyme lets the others make the actual capture, while she stands at the door and holds position against any last-minute attacks. None come, and all too fast it's over, her soldiers cheering and back-slapping as President Snow kneels with three weapons pointed at his head. Lyme turns away and announces their success into the comms, waits for Rigel's acknowledgement, feels a cold foreboding when instead Marius answers her in a carefully modulated, professional tone.

But for now, they have to get President Snow secure. As soon as anyone realizes what happened, every loyal Peacekeeper will be headed in their direction. So would Coin's people, once her teams report in and it's clear that the capture didn't occur under her command. Phase II needs to happen now, and they don't have time. "Get him quiet and ready to go," Lyme says to her second, who nods and heads back in to relay the order.

Outside she finds Marius and the others in a huddle. Claudius jogs up to her, a little bloodied and wide-eyed but alive, and he presses his hand to the inside of her elbow in warning before her brain notes the one who's missing. Lyme locks gazes with Marius, who shakes his head, and Lyme lets out a breath. She didn't know them, didn't make friends with them like Brutus, and she can't make herself feel anything for one more death, not today. Not yet.

Besides, Lyme knows those faces. Marius is a seasoned officer and he'll keep it together as long as he needs to, but Selene's face is a rictus of fury, and Dash has one hand on her arm but he's not all there, his eyes faraway and his face pale. They can't stop now. Any acknowledgement, any sympathy, and it will all fall apart. "We need to move to Phase II," Lyme says. "Bring all the Victors together to the rendezvous point so we're ready to go by dawn. I need a team to go in, make sure the area is clear of any surface-to-air bombardment, any last traps. We need a clean sweep. Can your group handle this?"

Marius glances at his kids. Dash exhales once but then he nods, and Selene meets Lyme's gaze with savage intensity. "Good," Lyme says. "Claudius, go with them."

"Yes, boss," he says, but as she turns to go he follows her, twitching. "Brutus is — he didn't want to leave him there, Rigel I mean. So he and some of the others decided to do some corpse cleanup before we head out."

Lyme stares at Claudius as though that will make different words fall out of his mouth, but he only shrugs at her, helpless. "Of all the — you know what, I don't care," she says, clenching her fists to stop from flinging up her hands. "I don't have time for this. As long as he's at the rendezvous, let him do what he wants."

She relays the Phase II command through to the Victor comms, then thumbs the frequency over to the combat teams. "Phase I complete," Lyme announces, pausing for the short exclamations of satisfaction. Most of them are fighting and don't have time for anything more. "Phase II is in preparation. Make the switch."

With President Snow in custody, the non-Victor ground teams would now switch to distraction and discombobulation, working to disrupt both sides and take out as many fighting groups without casualties as possible. Bringing down buildings, obstructing roadways, whatever it took to block off sections of the city and keep the Capitol-loyal Peacekeepers and Coin's soldiers away from each other. How much of an effect it would have overall Lyme couldn't tell, but after so many hours of bloodshed, any reduction in casualties would feel like a victory, and if nothing else the added chaos would allow them to get the president underground without notice from either side.

With Lyme's second now in charge of the team getting President Snow away, and Claudius with Marius and his squad making safe the rendezvous site, Lyme has a moment to herself. The immediate burden of command has temporarily lifted, and she takes a few deep breaths and rakes her hands through her hair. As the rush of adrenaline fades, she thinks of Brutus, stubbornly taking care of the bodies in the courtyard.

Lyme rolls her eyes to the ceiling, mutters an oath under her breath, and heads downstairs. She finds him laying out the corpses — rebels and Peacekeepers alike — along the garden path, using a downed trellis as a makeshift bier. "Brutus," Lyme says when he doesn't look up. "We have to go." He ignores her. "For fuck's sake —"

"He turned for me," Brutus says. He doesn't shout it, doesn't raise his voice at all. Lyme almost wishes he had. "Would've turned one day anyhow, he was a good man, but fact is, he turned because of me. And now he's dead for it."

An ugly thought pops into Lyme's head: a whole lot more people have died for her, and for far more hopeless causes than this one, but she's still standing. She knows better than to say it, recognizes the weeks of hypervigilance and grief and lack of sleep that drove her to think it in the first place. Instead she says, "You know what you'd tell me, in your place."

Brutus goes still, one hand splayed over Rigel's eyes. "Don't."

Lyme crosses her arms over her chest, plants her feet and lifts her chin. "He already died for you. You gonna make it pointless, too?"

"You son of a bitch," Brutus says, the words completely without heat. "I'm just so Games-damned tired."

Lyme drops the posturing, crosses the courtyard and rests her hand on his shoulder. "We're almost there," she says. "A little more and we're done. Then you can take your kids back home, buy a microbrewery and officially retire."

Brutus snorts. "Yeah," he says, bracing both hands on his knees and pushing himself to his feet. "Yeah, sure, why the hell not."

They don't talk as they make their way through the city. Lyme takes point, leading them away from the worst of the fighting, and Brutus follows her without any of the customary jockeying that made up their dynamic prior to the war. Part of her wonders if they'll ever find it again, or if all this death means an end to the hypermasculine bullshit rituals they constructed between themselves so they could have feelings without either of them noticing.

One by one the Victor teams check in as they reach the rendezvous and find a hiding spot until go-time. Lyme breathes a sigh of relief when Misha announces her arrival, then forcibly clears her mind rather than keeping a running tally of the others. She'll find out when she gets there, and if she keeps worrying about everyone else she'll scrape herself ragged long before they ever get to the checkpoint.

The light has turned pale, the cool, desaturated grey of pre-dawn favoured by the Gamemakers and artificially extended during twilight hours, when Lyme and Brutus approach the edge of the perimeter from the roof of one of the nearby buildings. Lyme holds up a hand and they fall back, Brutus a solid presence at her side as they crouch and peer over the edge. "Looks like we're late to the party," Brutus says in an undertone.

The rendezvous point is a large park outside the centre of the city, with a wide expanse of grass, an amphitheatre with a stage and a giant screen, where a number of Capitol civilians have set up a temporary shelter and rest area for anyone who missed — or ignored — the evacuation. Unsurprisingly, this number is extensive, and it didn't take much for Lyme's scouts to herd the fleeing Capitol refugees toward it, and encourage any they saw during the chaos to head in that direction. Now, the park and surrounding streets mill with brightly-coloured citizens, unknowingly protected by a handful rebel soldiers now growing by the hour.

"We should get down there," Lyme says. The sun will be rising soon, and the crucial check-ins came through her earpiece a while ago. Everything is in place, and while Lyme could sit this one out and it wouldn't actually affect the mission, this one will be personally satisfying to see through to the end.

Brutus takes another minute to look out over the crowd. "You think she can pull it off?"

The million-dollar question. "She's a Victor," Lyme says, noncommittal.

Brutus scowls. "She's a kid."

"And I'm tired," Lyme says. She should have a better answer for him; they've come this far, and she's given speeches and rallied soldier after soldier to fight against impossible odds but right now she digs and finds nothing but dust. She thinks of her Arena, that long slog near the end where the hours melted together into sun and sweat and sand and thirst, where nothing mattered but survival and glory seemed a bitter, half-hysterical joke. "I killed a bunch of kids twenty years ago and that makes me qualified to lead people into battle. But I promised we wouldn't let the rebellion destroy this stupid country and this is our best shot. We either trust it or we don't."

Brutus stays quiet for a minute, then snorts and socks her in the shoulder. "So inspiring," he says, and when Lyme turns a flat stare on him, too weary even to glare, he drops the mocking expression. "I mean, not completely shitting you. You'd never get Twos on your side with a bunch of fancy fluff. You give them the truth, even if it's hard, and you tell them what they need to do."

Either death had mellowed Brutus, or the world really is coming to an end. Lyme drags a hand down her face. "So, what, you're telling me you'll follow me into this mess?"

"You dumbass." Brutus shoves her. "I'm saying I already have. Now let's go before this gets all mushy."

It's a sign of the times that Brutus and Lyme can make their way through a crowd of Capitol citizens together without anyone recognizing them, but with an actual war on their doorstep the people finally have something more important on their minds than celebrity-spotting two older Victors. The light is growing but it's still dark enough that making out people's faces is tricky, and both Lyme and Brutus have years of practice at slouching and making themselves look less physically impressive than they are.

She spots one or two others among the random citizens but doesn't look, doesn't even turn her head in case someone else notices the people in cloaks moving with quiet purpose toward the stage. A handful of rebel doctors — Coin's people, not hers, Lyme can't help noting, and wonders whether they have her authority or if they did this on their own — have set up temporary stretchers and are tending to the injured.

They reach the bottom of the stage and do their best to mingle without drawing attention. Lyme attracts an odd look from a blue-haired woman, but she keeps her gaze forward and the woman walks away, shaking her head. As Lyme waits — as they all wait — a single figure makes her way up the steps to the stage. She kneels by an injured woman, speaks a few quiet words, then moves on. After the second, a handful of onlookers start to whisper; by the third and fourth, a hush descends over the crowd.

Then Katniss Everdeen stands and raises her hood as the giant screen behind her flickers into life, and the park explodes into pandemonium.

The girl's protection detail from Thirteen flank the stage, weapons drawn, and the initial surge recedes, babbling wildly to each other as her Capitol camera crew continue to film. Lyme studies the larger-than-life image of her projected onscreen, wonders what they'll think of it seeing her like this: pale, exhausted, shadow-eyed and hollow-cheeked, no makeup or concealer to make her look anything but what she is. But there's fire here too, for the first time in months, and she holds her head high.

When she speaks, silence falls.

"You know what I have to say," Katniss says. "You've heard me ask you, again and again, to stand and fight. To look around at the courage of all those brave people who have risked everything to show you the darkness in this country. I know you've seen it. You saw it when the President promised two winners from the same district and then tried to take back that promise. You saw it when the Victors were promised a life safe from the Arena only to be dragged back in to kill their friends, their loved ones. You saw it when their bodies were sold, again and again and again, so that you play at romance. When their families were murdered if they said no. You saw my district burn. You saw hospitals set on fire with patients still inside. How much more do you need to see?"

Uncomfortable shuffling. Katniss forges on. "President Snow told you that I died, but he was wrong. I survived, and I kept fighting, and I'm not the only one."

Since everyone knows the Mockingjay performs better without a prearranged script, they left the actual cue up to her, but Lyme recognizes it as if she'd been given an actual line. She and Brutus step forward with the rest, skipping the stairs and vaulting over the edge of the stage, carefully avoiding the recumbent bodies of the injured and coming to stand in a line facing the crowd as the other Victors file up to join them.

Not everyone who survived past the Quarter Quell, of course; a few died under torture, and some stayed behind in safehouses, and one or two it seems didn't make it back to the rendezvous in time, but still, an impressive number. (She doesn't see Misha or Emory or Devon, but Misha checked in, so they're here somewhere.) Even better, at a suggestion from one of the other mentors, they arrange themselves in the order of how they arrive at the stage, not in blocks by district, and so Lyme stands shoulder to shoulder with Brutus and Cora from District 9. Jaded as she is after decades of image training and interviews and posing to effect, Lyme glances down the line and feels a shiver.

When Cora reaches for her hand, Lyme doesn't hesitate.

"We're here with a message," Katniss says. "I'm done trying to convince anyone to fight. We're here today to tell you that it's time to accept the truth: it's over."

The crowd gasps. Lyme doesn't turn, but she knows what they'll be seeing: footage of President Snow in custody, by now safely away on a rebel hovercraft where no one — not the Peacekeepers, not Coin — will be able to get to him in time.

Katniss raises her fist in the air. "President Snow has surrendered! He has already given up the codes to deactivate the traps throughout the city. We are asking all remaining soldiers to put down your weapons. We stand before you now as Victors united in the promise of a free, and fair Panem. People of the Capitol, people of Panem: join us in celebrating a new future!"

The sun rises from behind the screen, dazzling as its rays burst forth in a shower of pink and gold, and Lyme will never make fun of the propo team and their timing ever again.

With the crowd in a frenzy, Lyme's soldiers wait in position around the edge of the park. But when the Mockingjay — the girl on fire, the star-crossed lover — reaches out and takes the hand of Peeta Mellark, the mad energy flared, then collapsed and deflated. The power of love indeed.

Of course, it's not over yet: the other recipient of the message had yet to respond, and will have just realized that she had no hand in the president's capture, or Katniss' survival, or the Victors' — or the future that the Mockingjay just laid out.

"Do you think she'll go for it?" Brutus asks her in a low voice. They'd discussed both options, try to unmask Coin the old-fashioned way or draw her out, but Lyme was sick of waiting.

"Only one way to find out," Lyme murmurs back.

They hear the hovercrafts before they see the flickers in the air that mark the stealth fields. Then they uncloak, revealing sleek grey lines and the Capitol seal emblazoned on the underside. At her side, Cora freezes. "You don't think —"

Understanding hits Lyme like a bucket of ice water, followed by an irritating prickle of — almost — grudging admiration. No one ever said Alma Coin didn't have plans on plans on plans. "No, that's a Thirteen shuttle, she's just painted it to look like the Capitol's. Which means —"

The lower hatch opens, and dozens of silver parachutes drop from the hovercraft, floating slowly toward the stage. "Oh shit," Brutus says, jerking back. "I'm pretty sure those won't have bread and apples in 'em —"

Lyme starts to scramble back — nearly trips over an injured citizen lying behind her — a few of the Victors leap to the ground — others bend down, try to lift the wounded —

— the parachutes explode at once in a deafening percussive blast, sending bits of metal and scorched fabric raining down onto the stage. Lyme ducks, arms flung up to protect her head, but other than a singed sleeve and a few dings on her back from shrapnel pieces she stands up no worse for wear.

"They'd only just launched when they went off," Cora says, shielding her eyes and peering up in open shock. "Ten, fifteen feet from the hovercraft at most."

The hovercraft wobbles, smoke spilling from its undercarriage, and takes off in a low trajectory that will bring it down toward the middle of the city. Already a cadre of rebels have taken off in pursuit.

"Beetee," Brutus says, smacking his fist into his palm. "Gotta be. Eibhlin said he and Rokia had some secret plan ready but couldn't risk saying what it was, even under encryption."

"Katniss!" A voice cuts through the crowd, piercing the wailing and hysterics, and everyone turns to look as their Mockingjay freezes.

"Prim!" Katniss Everdeen breaks free of the circle of concerned well-wishers and jumps from the stage, shoving aside the sputtering citizens to run toward her sister. "You're not supposed to be here, why are you fighting?" They catch each other in a hard embrace, laughing and crying and talking over each other, and Lyme studies the crowd as they watch, at first reluctantly and then completely transfixed by the scene.

Wars are about the little victories as much as they are the big ones, Lyme reminds herself, and allows a quiet moment of satisfaction.

A rebel soldier jogs up to her, holding an inter-district communicator. "Sir," he says, handing it over. "I, ah. Message for you."

"Congratulations on your efforts," Beetee says in her ear. "Can I expect some manner of fruit basket in exchange for mine? I believe if you recover the hovercraft, you will find concrete evidence that it was indeed a District 13 vehicle, complete with a copy of the orders from Coin herself."

"The parachutes were a nice touch," Lyme says, walking a little away from the hubbub so she can better hear the conversation. "A little on the nose, really. She really didn't know we were here?"

"No, the bombs were intended for Capitol civilians. The parachutes were merely an attempt to create a sense of security, given their association with gifts and the like. The Victor correlation was quite the coincidence."

"And Coin?"

"In her command craft, the controls of which I have remotely accessed and locked down once the bombs were away, as agreed," Beetee says, somehow managing to convey savage satisfaction through a completely bland tone. "I can transfer them over to the officer of your choice at any point when you want to make the retrieval, but you needn't worry about her escaping for the time being."

Lyme sags. "So it's done."

Beetee's chuckle rattles over her earpiece. "The megalomaniacal dictators are out of the way, at least. That's a start."

Lyme closes the comm and turns back to the other Victors, suddenly eager to find the others. So much work to do, and soon the reality of it will come crashing down; she needs a few minutes to hold her kids, hug her mentor, remember that they'd made it through okay before they dive back in to fix the mess. She finds Nero first by size alone, standing with Enobaria and Adessa (who was supposed to be in a safehouse, Lyme is pretty sure, but oh well), and — oh shit. Her stomach twists, because that's his lost-a-tribute face.

"What happened," Lyme demands, except she knows already. Nero is stricken, Adessa solemn, even Enobaria looks furious and wide-eyed, and only one person in the entire Village crosses over between the three of them like that. "Callista —"

"She didn't make the rendezvous," Nero says, his voice dull. "She'd never miss a grand finale like that. I can't raise her on the comms, either. When I try her or Hera, all I get is static."

"Maybe she got held up somewhere," Lyme says, even as she knows. She _knows_ , she's a mentor, she knows better than that, but when she tries to accept the truth of Callista — vibrant, terrifying Callista — lying dead in the street somewhere, her mind shies away.

"Where are they!" Brutus thunders, cutting through the rest of their conversation. Lyme whirls to see him nose to nose with Misha, who's smeared fingertips to elbows with blood in clothes that look like they went through a second Arena. Her heart drops. "Where the _fuck_ are my kids!"

Lyme shoves her way between them, slamming her hands into Brutus' chest and putting all her weight behind them. "Back off!" she snarls, adrenaline on high. "Leave her the fuck alone!" She turns her back on him, slow and deliberate, even as she can feel him trembling with anger behind her. Misha stands in front of her, filthy and blood-soaked with tear tracks winding through the grime on her face. "Misha, what happened?"

"I don't know," Misha says. "I don't know, I — Devon stepped on a landmine, Emory got caught in the blast. We took them to the hospital, I tried to stay but he made me go, he said I had to — I couldn't — he said we had to see the mission through." Her voice breaks and she buries her hands in her hair. "I shouldn't have listened, I should've stayed there, I never should have let him convince me —"

Her legs give out, and Lyme catches her around the waist and pulls her close. "Hey," she says, putting on her best mentor voice. "It's okay. You're okay. Can you take us to the hospital?"

Misha nods, and she takes a long, deep breath and lets it out. "Yeah," she says. When she opens her eyes she has a grip on herself, and Lyme has the horrified thought that she really, really hopes nobody tells her about Callista, not yet. Misha looks at Brutus, and Lyme pivots to glare at him but he's no longer furious, just pale. "I'll take you, I know the way."

Claudius appears at her side, face drawn and white but determined. "You guys go, we can hold it here."

It's tempting — but no, she shouldn't go running off at the first sign of personal trouble. "No, I'll stay, but Brutus and Misha should go," she says. "But Brutus —" The protective anger fades at the sick terror on his face, as Lyme looks at her own two kids and imagines what she'd feel if they were the ones dead or alive. She lays a hand on his shoulder. "She says they were alive when she left. Don't — not until you have to, all right?"

Brutus smacks her hand away and stalks off ahead without waiting for Misha.

Misha lets out a shaky breath. "What do I do if they're dead? How can I ever look at him again?"

"It's not your fault." Lyme runs a hand over Misha's hair, or tries, but there's too much blood. "He'll see that, whatever happens, and I won't let him blame you. But go, quick, the faster he gets there, the better."

She turns back to Claudius, who in his grey uniform with the blood and the smudges and his quiet, evaluating expression looks more military now than she's ever seen him. If not for the sword strapped to his back she could almost forget he'd been a Victor at all — until he breaks character and hugs her tight. "Lotta close calls there, boss," he says. "Glad we made it out."

"Promised you we would," Lyme says, gripping him hard by the back of his neck. "Now go get Marius, we still have one loose end to tie up before we can start the clean-up for real."

* * *

"So," says Alma Coin, studying them with her usual cool grey stare, "I presume you're here to kill me. Which one of you won the coin toss, or do each of you get a stab, classics-style?"

Claudius, standing at Lyme's side with his arms crossed and fingers digging hard into his biceps, rolls his eyes. Finnick Odair lets out an unreadable chuckle, while Peeta Mellark says nothing, jaw clenched tight. Katniss curls her hands into fists. "We're not killing anyone," she says. "Especially not in secret. There's been enough of that already."

It's just the five of them here, plus a handful of rebel guards. Coin tried to kill all the Victors on the stage at the end, and sent out the bombers to destroy the entire District 2 Victors' Village, but these betrayals are the personal ones. The kill order against Claudius and Lyme, the suicide mission for Finnick and Katniss with Peeta as a secret sleeper assassin, these were attacks against her own people. They worked alongside her, sacrificed themselves to her cause, and she turned on them when they no longer served her purpose.

Coin raises an eyebrow. "So you're here to gloat?"

Finnick shifts, twisting the rope bracelet around his wrist. "With all due respect, Madam Ex-President, I think we've earned it."

"What I think is it's ironic that you believe you've earned anything at all," Coin says, calm but with an edge of steel. "You used my work, my soldiers, my spies, my years of infiltration and destabilization, my momentum, and you came in at the end and took all the credit. You took what you wanted and now you think you can toss me aside."

"Excuse me if I'm wrong, ma'am," says Peeta Mellark, and they all turn to look at him. He shifts away from their gaze but doesn't back down, fixing his eyes on Coin. "I thought that's exactly what you do — did, with us. Maybe we learned from the best."

Claudius stifles a laugh into his hand, and this time when he glances at Peeta it's with a flicker of something that might be the beginning of respect. Lyme would be more amused — and maybe she will be, later, with time — but right now all she feels is _tired_. Coin meets her gaze, a challenge and a test as always, and Lyme holds it with dispassion.

"Now that the war is over, there will be trials," Lyme says. "Transparency. It won't just be Coriolanus Snow on the stand. Everyone in this room knows you have a lot to answer for."

"As if I'm the only one in this room who should fear a public inquest," Coin scoffs, smoothing a strand of slate-grey hair behind her ear. "Everything I did can be justified under acts of war. In fact, I do believe I'm the only person without blood on my hands."

This time it's Lyme's turn to roll her eyes, and to their credit, none of the other Victors sees fit to rise to that jibe either. "We'll see," she says. "We just wanted you to know that you failed. You tried to kill us, but we survived. And we'll be here to watch you fall."

"I see." She smiles, thin and snakelike. "And how long do you think these trials will take before my official, public, _transparent_ execution?"

"Nobody is executing anyone," Katniss snaps, a flush spreading upwards from her neck. "Aren't you listening? We're done with death and mortal punishment. We all want Snow dead — I want him dead, you don't think I dream about it at night — but what will that solve? The country needs to heal, not more blood."

A pause, then Coin actually laughs. In all her time in Thirteen, Lyme can't recall the president ever showing any emotion stronger than that enigmatic smile, and she has to fight not to recoil. Finnick wrinkles his nose like an offended cat, and Katniss blinks and jerks away. "You're all fools," Coin says finally. "No more blood! This country has sucked itself fat on seventy-five years of blood. It won't be satisfied with weak, tidy displays of justice. By all means, try it, play your little games, but when the people are cold and hungry and the reconstruction isn't going fast enough and they're looking for someone to blame it on, you'll wish you'd given them a spectacle. You'll see."

Finnick catches Lyme's attention, lines tight around the corners of his eyes even as he keeps his tone light. "I think we should go, don't you?"

"Yeah," Lyme says. "We're done here."

"One more question," Coin calls out. Lyme folds her arms but waits while the others head for the door. "I saw you in District 2, playing the hero, getting all those people to follow your banner. What do you think your new friends will think when you drop this humble act and seize power like you've been planning all along?"

They stop, turn to look at her. Lyme stands there in shocked silence for a good five-count, but then the stress and the sheer absurdity of all of it breaks free and it's her turn to burst into laughter, wild and incredulous. When she winds down they're all still staring in mild alarm, but the kind that's more concerned for her sanity than her political aspirations. "Oh boy," Lyme says, swiping at the corners of her eyes. "I could make a speech about how some people want to do the right thing for the right reasons and not because they're power-hungry assholes, but honestly? You severely overestimate my tolerance for political bullshit."

"With a platform like that, I'd vote for you," Finnick jokes as they head out into the corridor.

"Don't you fucking dare," Lyme says, glaring at him as her communicator beeps.

It's Misha. Lyme's brief moment of humour collapses, guilt rushing in to fill the void. "You need to get everyone from the safehouses and bring them to the hospital," Misha says, her voice thick. "It's Emory."


	13. Chapter 13

Artemisia has the half-hysterical thought that it would be hysterical if Snow lied about the shutdown codes and left the whole city seeded with traps. Except that, of course, their rebel escorts aren't idiots and had the same thought, and regardless of whatever the president announced, they aren't going to let anyone march through a red zone without testing it first. The hilarious part is that it does actually appear to be true; trap after trap is deactivated as they pass by, and Artemisia doesn't even have the presence of mind to appreciate the irony of President Coriolanus Snow telling the fucking truth for once.

Not with Brutus beside her, a crackling thundercloud on legs, and it's a good thing the Centre instilled a foolproof sense of direction into its trainees meant to last even through the week three Arena dehydration and borderline madness because Artemisia had not actually thought to mark the hospital down on her map.

(She manages to avoid the spot where they were hit, but only barely, recognizing the entry into the square a second before she turns them into it. If Brutus notices Artemisia's hard jog right into an alley he's too deep into his scowl to comment, and it saves them both a trudge through the giant pool of Devon's blood that will be drying sticky on the broken concrete.)

As it is she's too frazzled to try to transpose her zigzag route through the combat zones into something more straightforward, and she can sense Brutus' mood like a palpable thing by the time the stark white building looms ahead. Artemisia chokes back a gasp of relief; she'd never actually seen the place herself, and had fought a gnawing fear the whole time that maybe the Peacekeepers had made it all up to make her feel better while they carried Devon and Emory somewhere comfortable and quiet to die in peace.

They're not the only ones there. Be it the announcement of the president's capture, or a change of heart by the 'for our people' Peacekeepers, or desperation of others in the area, who knows, the people in the triage areas and lying on rows of cots wear anything from Peacekeeper white to rebel greys to ridiculous Capitol civilian wear while doctors bustle between them without regard for who's on which side. The Peacekeepers who brought Devon and Emory are long gone, and Artemisia has no idea who they talked to or where they might have left them.

Luckily — for Artemisia, maybe not the hospital staff — she's here with Brutus in full-blown angry bear mentor mode. "I'm looking for Victors," Brutus snaps at an attendant, reaching for her arm and only just stopping himself from grabbing her with a visible show of restraint. _Dead Odin wouldn't like that_ , Artemisia thinks, then hates herself a little. "Man and a woman. Boy's around her age, girl's around mine, both from Two. Came in here after stepping on a mine."

"Trauma ward three," the woman says calmly, impressive in the face of Brutus in a full protective rage, and she steps away and keeps on moving down the hall.

At least she didn't say the morgue. The air slides into Artemisia's lungs a little easier.

A few more directions from passing nurses and they find Devon, pallid and drowning in blankets, stuck full of needles with eyes wide and irises swallowed by his pupils from the morphling pumping through his system. Artemisia wants to dart forward and fling herself at him, cool insouciant reputation be damned, but she hangs back and lets Brutus go first. Her mentor taught her some manners, look at that. He pulls up an absurdly small chair and sits on the edge, frame bending a little under his weight. "Hey, charmer. Looking good."

"Hey, Dad," Devon says, but Brutus doesn't even flinch. Artemisia has no idea whether this is a drugs-induced mistake or a nickname Devon used to use in private that she was never allowed to see before. "Did I go back in? Did I kill people again?"

"Not quite," Brutus says. The corners of his eyes tighten, and he ruffles Devon's hair like he's a five-year-old, smoothing it back from his forehead. "You do this to get the good stuff, kid? You could've asked."

"Where's the fun in that?" Devon blinks in slow motion, and he starts to laugh, only for the sound to take a hard left and stick in Artemisia's ribs. "They told me they took my legs. I don't remember. Can't feel it. I went to sleep, woke up and — boom, no legs." He lifts his hand, tries to swipe at his eyes and hits himself in the face. "You gonna return me now that I'm broken? I think I'm past my warranty."

Brutus closes his eyes for a few seconds, takes a breath and swallows hard, and when he opens them again there's no hint of turmoil in his expression. He's just a mentor, proud and a little scolding. Artemisia has no idea how they do it. "Don't be stupid, kid, I've more than got my money's worth outta you. All this means now is your top half has gotta be twice as handsome to make up for it, not that I'm any judge of that. You'll have to ask one of your admirers or something. Misha?"

He doesn't look at her, but it's as good a peace offering as she's going to get, and at least it isn't over his corpse. Artemisia steps forward and sits on the edge of the bed, tracing her fingers over the side of Devon's face. He catches her hand on the third try and holds it there while Artemisia hunts for words. "Looking good to me. I didn't like your legs all that much anyway. I never told you, but your knees are all weird and knobbly."

Devon laughs again, sinking back into the pillow, but then he frowns, and he flails his free hand until it finds Brutus' arm. "Emory. Did you see Emory? I asked but they said — they wouldn't tell me. She wasn't moving. I don't know where she is."

Brutus goes very still, though his expression doesn't change. Artemisia swallows a mouthful of glass fragments. "I'm sure she's fine. Probably looks better than you, too, since she doesn't care about being pretty. You gonna be okay if I go look for her?" He reaches over and hits the morphling release button, sending a new dose through the tubes, and Devon's eyelids flutter.

"Yeah," Devon says, dreamy. He pulls Artemisia's hand close like a Career cuddling knives in the Arena before drifting off. She waits a minute to make sure he's really down, then tugs her hand free and slides off the bed.

Emory can't be dead, Artemisia tells herself. Someone would have said something. But saying the words out loud feels like spitting in the face of invisible Gamemakers and daring them to push the button.

Brutus takes a second, then exhales and pushes himself to his feet. "Gonna start looking," he says.

Emory, it turns out, is one floor up, in the palliative ward. Artemisia frowns at the unfamiliar term; she finished her education after winning out of sheer boredom, but that's not a word she knows. Brutus, who routinely toured hospitals with his Victors as part of his PR, tenses in a full-body clench. This time, when he heads out into the corridor, he puts one foot in front of the other with care instead of his previous power-stride. Dread curls in Artemisia's stomach; she'd rather have Brutus charging through the halls and terrorizing nurses and shaking people down for information than this solemn, slow march of the condemned.

Finally Artemisia can't take it anymore, and she accosts a passing nurse to ask him what it means. The man looks at her, then gestures at the rooms that fill the hallway. "The palliative ward is for terminal cases," he says. "It means we make them comfortable."

For a second Artemisia is about to protest — the whole hospital is filled with people who are dying, this is a war there are people downstairs with bits of them blown off, sucking chest wounds, gunshot blasts to the neck bleeding out onto the operating table, why do they have to have so many fancy words for simple things — but then the silence hits her. No screams, no shouting, no running through the halls. Even the walls here are painted different colours, and the furniture and paintings radiates calm and comfort and reassurance.

Oh no.

Artemisia could almost handle a grisly, gruesome death. She's seen them in the mentor's seat, and as much as it would tear her apart, they're devastating and impersonal and entirely out of her hands. But this place implies something else entirely, and if she's right —

If she's right, she wouldn't trade places with Brutus right now for anything in the universe.

"She's stable for now," the nurse says, still in that gentle voice, and it's a good thing Artemisia doesn't have a dagger on her because she might have tried to carve out his larynx.

"Thanks," she says curtly, and she brushes past him and heads for the room down the hall where Brutus disappeared.

She's two steps in before the sound hits her, and it jars her to a stop as though someone jabbed a dagger into her spine. It takes Artemisia that long to register because she's never heard it, never heard Brutus' voice like this, hoarse and cracked and pleading, and her brain refuses to acknowledge the input for a solid five seconds. "Sweetheart, you're gonna wake up," Brutus says. He hadn't bothered with the chair, kneeling on the floor with her hand clutched in both of his, forehead pressed to the bed. "You're not gonna leave me here because that's not allowed. Mentors don't outlive their Victors. It ain't done. You don't wanna break the rules, do you?"

Artemisia and Brutus mentored together the year of the 64th Hunger Games. They shared a number of grief rituals — the train ride back to the Capitol, sitting in silence with the caskets; seeing the bodies off to the field of sacrifice; making the appropriate speeches to the parents and the higher-ups at Games Command — but this is not one of them. This is, like Brutus said, the worst kind of wrong. Artemisia has accompanied one corpse back to District 2 for every bright-eyed, determined tribute she brought to the Capitol, but that possibility was always predetermined. Not this. Never this.

On the train Brutus sat unmoving, mouth thin and shoulders taut; he didn't shake, didn't beg, and Artemisia had never, ever heard the sound that tore loose from his chest now.

She can't be here.

"I'm going to go," she says. She doubts he heard her, and Artemisia flees the room, stumbles down the hall to a waiting room filled with absurdly purple sofas, and collapses with her head in her hands. But she's exhausted, fighting all night on high alert, and even with her emotions running ragged Artemisia manages to pass out in an oddly scrunched ball in the corner.

When she wakes up it's mid-morning, and Brutus hasn't moved. Artemisia checks on Devon, still loopy but doing well, and finally she heads back to the waiting room and pulls out her phone. Lyme should be done with her meeting by now, and even if she isn't, it's stupid but Artemisia really needs to hear her voice.

Lyme sounds tired, like they all do, but with an undercurrent of savage satisfaction, so things must have gone well with Coin. Artemisia feels a stab of guilt for ruining it, except she can't do this, not alone. Odin is dead, and without him there's only one person who can possibly reach Brutus in his grief.

"It's Emory," Artemisia says. Her throat closes and chokes off the words before she can say the rest, but she doesn't have to.

"I'll be there as soon as I can," Lyme says, and it's funny, yesterday Artemisia was still angry at her, she knows this because she has the memory of the sensation in her chest, that hot, prickling feeling, but she can't remember why it mattered.

* * *

Whoever set up the safehouse occupancy took great pains to match the pairs so that the long hours spent in isolation during the battle would be as painless as possible, and Ronan will have to praise them afterward. It can't be easy, matching so many Victors and their personalities and various existing medical needs following the others' incarceration and torture, but Ronan stole a cursory glance at the list before they were all shuttled off to their various secret locations and had to admit being impressed. The Scouts' knowledge of the Victors and their quirks definitely borders on the disturbing, but it has its perks, and everyone should make it through the final battle with the only assaults taking place on the Capitol rather than each other.

The safehouse assignments would have been a massive undertaking, which is the only reason why Ronan did not say anything when he saw that he and Petra had been placed together.

On the surface, it makes sense. Petra has always looked up to Ronan, and with Brutus fighting and Odin dead, Ronan is the senior authority figure she most looks up to. Given that they had both spent time together in Snow's custody as his "guests" after the fall of the last Arena, the choice to put the two of them together was likely the first one the rebels made. Start simple, work their way up to the more complicated options.

It's not their fault. On paper, Petra and Ronan are a clear match. A month ago, Ronan would have agreed with the choice wholeheartedly, naming himself as the only person in this situation who might stand a chance of keeping Petra calm as her world burned to the ground around her. The problem is that a month ago, Petra was a happy, ignorant pawn of the Capitol, exactly as Ronan made her. A month ago Petra had been blissfully unaware just how much of her reality Ronan had created and crafted in order to keep her quiet, comfortable and compliant.

Petra was never a worrisome child, never one for poking in corners and looking at the strings, asking questions and giving his elders heart attacks like young Claudius. She accepted the answers given and trusted that those responsible for her had her best interests at heart, and after a lifetime of Centre instruction and a thick manila folder with key phrases like _abandonment issues_ and _disproportionately positive response to praise_ it had not been difficult to mould her. Her devastating injury had shattered her teenage arrogance, allowing Brutus to remake it into its purer form, pride, and while she retained her temper tendency to rail against injustice and unfairness, there were no privileged classmates in the Village to steal her mentor's attention and spark her infamous rages. The blanket policy of the Victor's Village that everyone who walks through the gates automatically received the same status and deserved the same respect took the edge of competition that had occasionally spiked into insubordination and anger at the trainers at perceived favouritism or unequal treatment.

At the same time Petra was young and naive, not stupid, and Ronan had seen the keen light of intelligence in her. At any hint of injustice or unfairness, any indication of a promise broken, she dove for it with the same singleminded ruthlessness as any Career tribute for that first blade in the Cornucopia. Ronan had hoped that over time, the patina of disillusionment would build up over the shiny picture of the Capitol and the President that the Program had created for her — and that when it did, Ronan would be there to guide her, keep her sane so that her worldview shifted instead of shattered.

But then came the war, and the rebels and their tell-all broadcast, and everything Ronan hoped to dole out over time so as not to collapse Petra's carefully-constructed bubble world rushed in all at once. He'd seen his miscalculation immediately, of course; they'd kept her ignorant of too much for too long, isolating her to the point that she came across not only naive but uncommonly foolish in her interactions with the Ones. Those who knew the truth — that the Village had deliberately protected her — could hardly hate her less for the privilege of such a sheltered life than those who thought her ignorance a deliberate unconcern.

And with that first crack in the door, Petra would no longer be satisfied sitting in the dark. Ronan and Odin had managed to keep the bulk of her questions at bay with warnings about the surveillance in the mansion, and Petra had chafed but listened to orders like any good soldier — and possibly they could have spent their time in the safehouse with explanations, if Ronan had not made one crucial error.

 _I watched you die,_ Ronan said to Brutus, his own guilt and helpless anger over seeing Odin's body cooling in its own blood on the hovercraft floor driving away his reason under an onslaught of fury and carelessness. _I was there when Coriolanus ordered the Gamemakers to assassinate you as punishment for my failure to placate his ego._

He'd thought nothing of it at the time, too caught up in his own thoughts and the swirl of his emotions, carried away by raw feeling for the first time in decades. He hardly realized what he said until the hovercraft landed and they disembarked, until Petra lingered back behind the others and pushed a hand into his chest, shoving Ronan back against a landing strut. "You knew," she snarled in a low, dangerous hiss. "You knew the whole time, and you — you let me eat his _fucking cookies_."

Then Petra limped away, her hip and leg stiff after kneeling so long on the hovercraft floor with Odin's massive bulk crushing her, and did not look back.

Now, even after hours and hours together in the safehouse, just the two of them and their pair of assigned rebel protectors, Petra has not said a single word. Ronan has to admire her dedication; a more passive-aggressive person might have chosen to speak only to the rebels, pointedly ignoring only Ronan, but Petra has doubled down and said absolutely nothing to anyone since the doors closed behind them. The rebels attempted to carry on a conversation for a while, but with the massive wall of ice in the corner even their best efforts soon died out. Now they talk to each other in murmurs that do little to lighten the oppressive mood.

He does not bother to try and explain himself. Petra is not the type to listen to justifications, and Ronan is not in the business of defending himself to children, no matter how much he may have wronged them. Everything he did, he did to protect his children and his people, and in another time Petra might have come to see it. Whether she will now that she sees herself done such a grievous wrong, in the throes of grief and under the shadow of the flames of war, Ronan can't tell. At least with Brutus and the other Victors alive she had options if she never forgives him.

Selfishly, Ronan misses his dogs. Callista, in the evacuation, insisted that the rebels cart away all nine of her cats, and the terrifying force of her personality assured that her wishes were carried out. When Ronan heard this news, he'd felt a lightness in his heart that he had not known in years: all his children alive, _and_ they had bothered to rescue the animals? Except when he'd stopped Caius to ask how his hounds were faring with the lack of space, his Victor froze as the blood drained from his face.

(He doesn't blame them. A last-minute scramble to evacuate before the bombs dropped, and his dogs had likely been asleep under the porch, quiet and independent like always. He'd tasked Caius with making sure they had food and water and that the door to the inside didn't get stuck, not with making sure to remember them in the event of a near-death experience.)

Such an insignificant hurt to focus on — the loss of two dogs with so many human lives destroyed — but Ronan can't help but focus on it, as though his brain keeps turning to the only thing small enough for it to grasp. And now, faced with Petra's furious disapproval and the uncertainty of the action outside, Ronan can't help but think how much better he could bear it all if he had his boys flopped against his side, their massive heads draped across his lap.

But he has no dogs, or Victors, only Petra's impressively maintained wall of silence and the awkwardly shuffling rebels, and so Ronan shifts in his uncomfortable seat and bears up with a stoicism that would have impressed his old trainers, would that they still lived to see him.

Now and then the sounds of battle filter through to their underground hideaway, explosions and rattling gunfire and the occasional scream of heavy artillery, but Ronan refuses to torment himself. If he dies here, then here he dies; he has lived a long life, and will not scrabble for more time if the universe decides that this will be his end. Ronan would feel worse for Petra, to be cut down so young after a life that has not yet been hers to live, but obsessive worrying will not protect her, a skill that served him well through decades in the mentor ring.

Some time after they hit the twelve hour mark, Petra stirs. Ronan, dozing, feels the change in the air, a prickle of warning to instincts he has never managed to shake even after a lifetime away from the Arena. He opens his eyes to see her staring at him, brilliant blue eyes sharp and intense and piercing. "I understand why you wouldn't tell me everything," Petra says evenly, in the tone of someone who has rehearsed a simple phrase many times. "I wasn't a mentor yet. I didn't need to know. A lot of it would have come up when I started mentor training." She stops, purses her lips, her throat working as the facade of calm fights against whatever emotions roil beneath the surface. "I just want to know one thing. Did you have to let me love him?"

Ronan has lived a long life, and part of that longevity has come from his ability to read others and their their motivations and use that to predict outcomes. He had expected her to ask why he thought she needed protection, or perhaps even post-adolescent railing that she is not a child. This question, he did not anticipate. "Because I needed him to love you," Ronan says, the answer coming as swift as his surprise. "And Coriolanus does not love anyone unless he has complete faith in their loyalty and devotion."

Petra stares at him, and Ronan has the amused thought that at least they both managed to startle each other. "But _why_?"

He smiled, thinly. "I have done everything I can for Two and for the Village all my life because Coriolanus sees me as a threat too valuable to remove. He respects me, but he does not trust me, and our relationship has always been capricious. Imagine, Petra, what you could do for us if we could weaponize the trust and love you've earned." Petra's stare only lengthens, and Ronan closes his eyes. "I have looked for a successor for many, many years, but no one could match my influence with the President. Not until now."

Petra's breath fills the room, harsh and heavy, but this time when the silence descends, it carries a very different weight. Ronan doesn't bother to continue the conversation, or to open his eyes to see the expression on the faces of their bodyguards. It's all pointless now, and Ronan has never allowed himself to indulge in impossible could-have-been hypotheticals.

He doesn't apologize, and perhaps more surprisingly, Petra doesn't demand him to. Since Petra has never avoided a confrontation in her life, Ronan decides to take this as a sign that she is mulling over his reasons and trying to work out the wisdom for herself. Petra had never been as big-picture as Ronan, but she understood brutal survivalism; he'd hoped that over time, with space to mould her, he could have brought her around. Of course, they'll never know now.

More explosions; more gunfire; more distant screams, possibly imagined. The Program's tests, back in Ronan's day, were little more than weapons training with some exposure and the kill test thrown in, nothing like the psychological battery flung at the young ones these days. Petra suffered three days of isolation and sleep deprivation as part of her routine evaluation (and scored quite highly, if he recalls), but this is not the kind of thing Ronan is used to shrugging off. He has no friends to talk to, no stories to pass the time, and even an old man can only sleep so long.

At last he hears voices, excited shouts and pounding at the door. Their rebel companions call a set of code words through their comms, and the doors open to reveal an exhausted-looking pair of soldiers, vaguely bloodied and dirt-spackled but otherwise unharmed.

"Thank god," the woman says. "I thought they'd got you, too."

Petra scrambles to her feet — or tries, the long hours of sitting having seized her hip completely. She waves off the aid of one of the rebels before gritting her teeth and accepting his arm, leaning against him as her face turns grey. "What are you talking about, 'us too'?"

She winces. "Let's get you out of here first —"

"Don't fucking play with me," Petra snaps, twin spots of colour rising in her cheeks through the ashen pallor. "Who's dead?"

The other soldier runs a hand through his hair, displacing flakes of ash. "A couple of the safehouses were hit, bad luck. Most of them are fine, it wasn't too bad, some cave-ins, nothing major, but —" He turns to Ronan, and no, no, he can't, not this too, anything but this — "Safehouse B got completely obliterated. Killed them as soon as it hit. We pulled them out for you."

Safehouse B: Caius and Luna. Ronan's first. Not his favourites, because he loves all his children, but over the years, the closest he's ever had to peers in his own home. Grief settles over him like a heavy cloak.

"They were supposed to be safe," Petra says, accusing, voice spiking high with disbelief. She sounds so very young.

"We've got to get you back," the woman says, ignoring her with practiced professional politeness. "It's done — we won, both Snow and Coin are in custody, and we're securing the city now. But now they need you at the hospital."

The way she says it, careful and guarded, makes Ronan turn. "Why," he says, dread suffusing him in a slow wave. "What happened at the hospital?"

* * *

Once, when Lyme was young and angry and stupid and Brutus brushed off an attempt to get under his skin, Lyme told him that one day he'd break and she'd be there to see it. Brutus only snorted, swiped her drink and told her to make sure to sell tickets. Now, after twenty years of friendship and working together, losing tributes and saving them and watching him patch broken kids back together, Lyme finally gets to see Brutus fall apart.

"Look, I've seen a lot of death, okay, I know what it looks like." Brutus stares down the doctor, a woman half his size who stares right back. Lyme is impressed in spite of herself; it's one hell of a profession. "This isn't dead. She's warm. She's breathing. Her heart's beating, for fuck's sake. You can't tell me this is just machines. She's still in there."

"With all due respect, you're used to corpses," the doctor says, and Brutus' hands ball into fists. "By the time you get them back, they've been sitting in stasis for some time."

"I've fucking killed people with my bare hands, have you? I've seen death happen, I've _felt_ it happen —"

"Yes, _violently_. It's not the same. Violent deaths are over quickly, and there is no medical intervention in the Arena, not like this. You have to understand, what you're witnessing is only possible because of the life support."

"Yeah, I get the machines are keeping her alive," Brutus bites out. "So do your job and _keep her alive_."

"No, I need you to understand this." The doctor puts a hand on Brutus' shoulder, keeps it there even when he tries to break free. "She is dead. The machines are simulating life, not extending it. She is dead. Her brain is dead. The life support is moving air through her lungs and blood through her heart, but there is no brain activity. Even with medical intervention, major systems will start shutting down in about a week."

"She's in a coma," Brutus argues, stubborn. It's like he's back in the sponsor ring, wrangling for supplies for a tribute from a sponsor who isn't convinced but might be if he could make a passionate enough argument. Lyme starts to reach out but holds herself back; the doctors wears the expression of someone who's had this conversation a dozen times before and is well prepared. "My youngest was in a coma for three days and she came out of it just fine. That's all this is."

"That was a coma." The doctor's voice softens. "This is brain death, a complete lack of neurological function. She is dead, sir. All the machines can do is maintain certain biological processes for a time."

"No." Brutus' eyes are wild and bloodshot. "I don't believe that. I won't. She's still in there, I just gotta —"

"She is not in there. She's gone."

Brutus grabs the doctor by the jacket, and that's Lyme's cue to haul him off, wrapping her arms around him and hooking them under his armpits to hold him back. The doctor, pale and thin-lipped but otherwise unfazed, shakes her head and stalks off down the hall. "Fuck you!" Brutus snarls, twisting in her grip, but Lyme locks her hands together in front of his chest and he can't shake her. Not without throwing her forward and turning this into an all-out brawl. "Get off me!"

"No," Lyme says, forcing the words out calm and slow like it doesn't tear off strips of her skin to do it. "You're going to listen to the doctor. They're trained for this. We're not."

"No, I'm fucking not, and fuck you, Lyme!" Brutus twists in her grip, half knocking her off her feet, but Lyme shifts her weight, re-centres herself and holds firm. "You came outta this with your mentor and your Victors and everything is _fine_ for you. Misha is fine, Claudius is fine, Nero is fucking fine, you're absolutely fucking unscathed. My mentor is dead and my boy lost his legs and that's my girl in that room, so no. I will not fucking _listen_ to them tell me to kill her. You don't understand a Games-damned thing, so get off me!"

Lyme drops him and staggers back, rage-blind for a few seconds even as the guilt stabs hard. "This isn't about me!"

"You're damned right it isn't. Now get the fuck out of my way." Brutus shoves past her, knocking her hard in the shoulder with his chest, and this time she lets him.

"This is hard for everyone," another doctor says. Lyme doesn't turn to look at him because right now she wants to punch someone in the face. "But in case you haven't noticed, this is a war zone. As cleanup continues we'll only be getting more. The sooner he makes his decision, the sooner we can free up resources for someone who needs them."

Intellectually, Lyme understands. She understands it in the same way that mentors will send sponsor reserves to tributes from other districts once their own are dead, because funds gathered in the sponsor den at each Games don't roll over and there's no point letting them go to waste. Intellectually, Lyme also understood that two kids a year was not a bad price for protection, if she could have pulled back and look at nothing but numbers.

Intellectually Lyme understands a lot of things. She still has to stop and take a deep breath to stop herself from curling her fingers into a fist. "Do you need the bed right this second?" she asks, amazed at how calm her voice sounds. No emotion at all, in fact, flat and grey and dispassionate as a steel wall. "She has family. We're bringing them here to — say goodbye."

The doctor flattens his eyes at her, but Lyme doesn't push or yell or roll up her sleeves or flash her wrists, just stands there in her day-old clothes with day-old blood being very, very patient, and finally he nods. "Nothing happens without the consent of next of kin," he says. "The only reason I'm saying anything to you is because I hope someone can convince him. Patients in a vegetative state can stay alive for years on life support. Her body will start to shut down around her by next week, and that will be much more upsetting."

"I'll talk to Brutus," Lyme says. It sounds so reasonable when she puts it that way. _I'll convince Brutus to let her die._ "It would be better if none of the doctors try."

"I think that would be wise," he agrees. Lyme gives him the most perfunctory of smiles before leaving to check on Devon.

Claudius finds her in the hallway on the way out of Devon's room. He's still in his rebel uniform, still blood-spattered and filthy, his hair lying flat against his head. He wears the Arena-haunted, half-manic eyes of someone who hasn't slept and is afraid to try. "Hey," he says, catching her by the arm. The lines of his face are gaunt. "We got the final counts. Callista and Hera died in the assault. Rebels pulled them out of the wreck of a fountain, looks like they set off a bunch of traps to blow up a bunch of tanks. Caius and Luna's safehouse was hit. Everyone else is clear and on their way, should be here within the hour."

Callista. Hera. Caius. Luna. Odin. Emory. Six of their own, far more than Lyme ever thought they'd lose, and most of them good, loyal, steadfast Victors who never asked to be part of this. She nods. "What about the other districts?"

"Two of the Ones went down fighting, maybe a suicide run, maybe not, we'll never know. A couple other safehouses were hit and we have some injuries, but nobody else was killed." Claudius runs a hand through his hair. "A couple of them want to be here, if you think Brutus will okay it."

Lyme opens her mouth, shuts it. "Really? Who?"

"Phillips from Six, Cora from Nine. Four wants to send someone too, probably Tyde or Theo." Claudius spreads his hands. "I'm not sure if they're coming for Brutus or Emory or both, but …"

Lyme weighs the options. District 2 has always been exclusive, and Brutus the most fanatically private of them all. But Emory was a good, solid, reliable mentor, never one for posturing or inter-district squabbles, and the other districts might not have invited her out to party with them but they certainly found no quarrel with her. It stands to reason that the most hard-working and steadfast of them would have come to respect her, at least professionally.

Some of the others might not approve, and Bruuts might snap if he had the acuity, but right now Lyme is half convinced the hospital could catch fire around him and he wouldn't even notice. "Bring them," she says, and a dark, cynical laugh works its way up from deep in her gut as she drags a hand over her face. "And thank the fucking war that there are no ga'damned cameras in our faces to capture this touching moment of inter-district harmony in the face of death."

Claudius' face contorts into a mask of savage rage before he gathers himself. "Fucking hell," he spits. "Listen, after this, I think I'm going to take Selene and Dash out for some supply runs. Marius got suckered into a bunch of logistics since he's the senior rebel Peacekeeper and he knows the city, and he's trying to coordinate things but he needs people on the ground. And Dash and Lene lost their commander in the fight and right now they're combing through the rubble looking for corpses and stragglers, and that's not —" He shakes his head. "We can always use supplies, right? I figure that's better than dragging bodies out of the debris, at least for a while."

Lyme gives him a hard once-over. He's definitely exhausted but refusing to let it hit him, and he hasn't started shaking but he will soon. "How about sleep," she says. "You ever think about that?"

"I'll sleep if you sleep," Claudius says, not accusing, just matter of fact, and when Lyme sighs he waves a hand. "Soon. Let me run them a little longer. I want to get them tired out enough they don't have anything left when they finally do lie down. Last thing they need is to start thinking about Rigel as soon as they finally stop moving."

It's — strange, to hear Claudius giving a shit about someone who isn't Lyme, or maybe Misha, and Lyme doesn't say anything out loud but her face must do something because he catches her and raises an eyebrow in challenge. "Yes, fine," she says. "Go talk to Marius, see what he needs, and then come back here. Hopefully everyone will have gathered and we can convince Brutus to —" She waves a hand, unable to say it.

Claudius nods, face tight, and he touches his fist to his chest and disappears.

The others trickle into the hospital in pairs, congregating in the purple waiting room in small groups, talking in undertones or sitting in silence. Nero draws Lyme close, pressing their foreheads together, and she lets him for a handful of shared breaths before she pulls away. Too much sympathy and she'll break, and the time when Lyme can afford to do that is a long way off.

Petra, to Lyme's surprise, doesn't demand to see Brutus and Emory right away, curling up in a corner with her cane clutched tight to her chest. She looks more lost than Lyme has seen since the early days; the fact that she's letting everyone see it is the most alarming part, but Lyme has never known what to do about Petra and clarity isn't falling from the ceiling now. In the end it's Cora who sits down beside her, and she says nothing but she extends one arm along the back of the sofa behind Petra's shoulders. Petra lets out a long breath, and she doesn't talk or cry or move in for a hug or anything so obvious, but she does let her head fall back against the older woman's arm.

Ronan turns to Lyme, and Lyme feels a pang because he looks so much older now than he did before the Quarter Quell but she can't think about that now. "Brutus?" he asks. Lyme shakes her head. She'd tried, but he eventually told her he'd ban her from the room unless she shut her fucking face and stopped trying to murder his girl. Ronan nods once, decisive. "Show me," he says.

Brutus doesn't look up when they walk in, Ronan's cane tapping against the floor in a steady rhythm, but his jaw tightens and his shoulders stiffen as he stares over the bed at the far wall. Lyme watches him put himself together, readying arguments in his head, hand tightening over Emory's fingers. But Ronan only stands next to him, saying nothing, every one of his seventy-six years written across his face and then some — every Two who fought and lost, every friend who died resting on the stoop of his shoulders.

"Brutus," Ronan says at last, and he doesn't touch him but Brutus flinches anyway. "Take it from an old man. It's time to let her go."

Brutus hisses through his teeth, but apparently that's all Ronan came to say. He turns and leaves, the tap-tap of his cane and shoes getting softer as he turns the corner and disappears into the corridor. Lyme holds her breath and counts off the seconds, but she's not even up to a minute before Brutus lets out a cracked, half-swallowed gasp and croaks, "You win."

It's a horrible thing to say. As if Lyme wants this, as though she feels anything but sick horror at the thought of turning off the machines and letting Emory slip away — like she can't even start to imagine this situation with Misha or Claudius without completely seizing up in terror. But Lyme understands the urge to take grief and drive it outwards, to lessen pain by transferring it to someone else. Brutus is usually the better person, but no one has ever asked anything like this before.

Let it go, she tells herself. "I'll get the others," she says.

It makes for an awkward gathering, all of them crammed into the room against the walls, and there's a slight delay because Devon insists on coming and they can't just lift him out of bed and carry him down the hall. They end up wheeling the entire bed into the room and propping him up enough to see, and Misha stands next to him and holds his hand as the doctors move about the room, unhooking the various lines and tubes and ventilators until it's just Emory, alone in the bed.

And it's ridiculous when Lyme has sat in the mentor seat more times than she can count, but she almost turns tail and runs away so she doesn't have to watch. Brutus moves into Emory's bed, cradling her against his chest with her head lolled back in the hollow of his shoulder. One by one the Victors come to the side of the bed, touch their fist to their chest and press two fingers to Emory's forehead. Brutus barely registers the presence of the Victors from the other districts, but his eyes flicker a little when Phillips lays a hand on his shoulder and Lyme hopes he'll remember, later, that they were there.

Petra is the last, her face pale and mouth pressed thin, but while her eyes are wide and white-rimmed they're completely dry as she bends to kiss Emory's cheek. Worse, when Petra steps back she stumbles a little, and no one catches her because the only ones she ever let comfort her are dead or incapacitated and no one else knows what to do. Lyme swallows guilt and pretends she didn't notice, and Petra grips her cane tight and moves back to her spot along the wall.

It — takes longer than Lyme expected. Without the ventilator Emory's chest stops moving right away, but Brutus keeps his finger and thumb curled around her wrist, tracking her pulse. The minutes stretch out and her heart keeps beating, but she's dead — she's _dead_ , her brain is a lump of meat inside a larger, slowly cooling lump of meat, the human body is horrifying — as her body winds down slowly, slowly. Lyme can barely breathe. The silence grows as Brutus' breath turns ragged, and at last he bites off a small cry and drops his head onto her shoulders.

The doctors move in, confer amongst each other, then step back and nod. "It's over."

Brutus makes a noise like someone stuck a knife in his spine. Lyme sucks in a breath, but before she can say anything it's Phillips, from Six, who steps forward. "Everyone out," he announces, with the calm, tired self-assurance of someone who has seen more death up close than anyone in this room. He ignores their shock, including Enobaria's bared teeth. "Let's let everyone do their jobs."

The Twos exchange glances, but he's right, and one by one they all file out. Lyme is halfway to the door when Brutus stops her, his voice strained. "Wait," he calls out. Lyme starts to turn but he lets out an inarticulate noise until she stops and faces away. "Don't look at me," Brutus gasps out. "But don't — don't go."

"I won't," Lyme says, to both, and she stands at attention while behind her Brutus cracks in two.

The words gush out of him in a torrent. Lyme hums the Panem anthem in her head to block it out ( _O horn of plenty, O horn of plenty for us all…_ ) but his voice crashes into her anyway, a flood of _I love you_ and _I'm so sorry_ and _I've got you_ until Lyme gives in and digs her nails into her wrists, working them back and forth to tear the skin, sliding her fingertips in the blood to ground herself.

Finally the words dissolve into heaving breaths and harsh sobs, and Lyme knows without a flicker of uncertainty that if this were Misha or Claudius lying dead on that bed she would never, ever leave. "Brutus," Lyme says, still without turning, "it's time to go."

He lets out a shuddering breath, and for a second Lyme wonders if she'll have to physically drag him but then he shifts, and she hears the bed creak as he lowers Emory down and slides off. He comes up close beside her, near enough she feels his body heat against her arm, and Lyme wraps her arms around his shoulders, digs her fingers into his neck and pulls him away, half-stumbling, into the hallway.

"You've still got two," Lyme reminds him, thinking of Petra sitting pale and silent on the sofa, refusing to let herself cry, as they stand by a window and look out at the ruins of the street. Brutus grips the windowsill until his knuckles tremble, and Lyme takes a risk and splays her fingers at the back of his bowed head. "Don't let them think they're not enough."

Brutus stares out through the glass in silence, and at last Lyme squeezes his shoulder and leaves him to his thoughts.

* * *

Every time Marius passes by a cluster of rebels celebrating in the streets, part of him wonders how they can't see it. This is the most dangerous time: there's a power vacuum, both in the Capitol and in the rebel ranks, and whoever steps in to fill it will lead the country into its new future with all the suffering and complications that come with it. They could offer that position to Marius with all the rubies and sapphires in District 1's mythical gemstone mines and he would say no thank you very much; it will be a tough job, coordinating infrastructure and resources and transportation after all were damaged or deliberately disrupted in the war, but also food shortages and refugee situations and all the bad feeling caused by decades of inter-district conflict and blood sport.

Cleanup is complicated enough, thanks. Someone has to do it and so Marius stepped in, and other volunteers joined him and offered their services, and soon enough he has a task force. Not just in the city — sweeping the centre core for any non-deactivated traps or loose mutts, tracking down any vigilante citizens or wayward Peacekeepers determined to make a last-ditch final stand, gathering up the fallen on both sides and tallying numbers, rescuing trapped citizens or soldiers, gathering any resources they can — but across the district, making contact with rebels or even with those Peacekeepers who've heard the broadcast and realized that protecting the citizens means maintaining order, not a pointless bloodbath.

More and more of Coin's people trickle in after the word goes out of her capture. Marius says nothing, only nods and gives them a task to do. He doesn't have enough to assign each of them official watchers, and at this point either they trust each other or they don't. He isn't stupid enough to give any of them critical information or access, but none of them ask for it, either.

Claudius stops by on his way to the hospital to tell him that they lost two more Twos in a safehouse bombing — completely accidental, always a risk. Marius should feel something, it obviously hurts the kid, but right now grief for Rigel takes up all the room in his chest and he can only nod. "I have to go say goodbye to Emory," Claudius says. Marius gives him a professional once-over when the kid looks back over his shoulder, and he's definitely tired but he's not at the point where he'll be making stupid mistakes, not yet, and the ruthless commander in Marius says he can keep going a little while longer before he should be forced to sleep. Years of managing squirrelly cadets has taught him where the line is. "We're pulling the plug as soon as everyone gets there."

Marius has a million things to do, but funnily enough, managing his own team — Dash's quiet grief and Selene's wild-eyed half-crazed fury — isn't one of them, because Claudius has stepped up to take it. He should probably stop calling Claudius "kid" in his head, since he's only four years older himself, but his first memories of Claudius aren't as a Victor, or even as a tribute on stage at the Reaping, but as a sharp-eyed ten-year-old in Residential, watching the older boys train and lighting up when they used to sneak him knives and dare him to try to hit targets across the room. It's clear Claudius doesn't remember; to him Marius is just one of the older kids who made a pet of him for a while until he entered Residential officially and had no time, but not even Marius is immune from remembering his private connection to a Victor.

Besides, both tributes in his year died, so this is all he's got.

Marius claps him on the shoulder and gives him a little shake, and Claudius smiles at him, part too-sharp for-the-cameras at the end of the Victory Tour, part exhaustion in the third week slog when the cameras and the sponsors still insist on perfection from the Career tributes, and then he's off. He'll be back, Marius is sure, once Emory is dead (Marius winces a little at how that sounds in his head, cold and impersonal, but so many have died and so will many more, and he told Selene this will be worth it, he promised) and there will be plenty to distract him.

He's on a crackly call from a bunch of fringe rebels out in Nine when someone taps his elbow. Marius holds up a hand, finishes gathering the report, then turns to her. "It's Paylor," she says. "Commander of Coin's ground forces. She wants to talk to whoever's in charge of the resistance."

Marius rocks back on his heels. He exchanges glances with a bunch of the rebels from Eight, the ones who pulled him in and who have been the backbone of their outfit the entire time, but Marius knows damn well that's just their outfit. There are pockets everywhere, and they all communicated with each other and coordinated and bits and pieces. The whole point of it, from what he'd gathered, is that they refused to develop one centralized command for exactly the reason that Coin had insisted on one: to avoid fomenting dictatorship within a movement meant to bring freedom.

Of course it wouldn't work as a long-term government, but they all knew that. They're not the leaders of a new world order. They were just here to bring the old one down. It's exactly (Marius thinks with a moment of cold amusement) what Joseph Seward and the leaders of the Peacekeeper militia had been railing against.

But with Coin in custody, the brilliant, charismatic woman who seized victory after victory out of countless situations and rallied the districts to war time and again makes sense as her de facto successor. She would not be the one Coin tapped — and she has to know that, if she's as smart as she looks. She also has to know that whoever Coin chose is likely to be as ruthless and lacking in empathy as his superior, but that it will take him longer to get to the Capitol from District 13 than from wherever she'd been stationed.

Paylor is smart, Marius thinks, and she knows which way the wind is blowing. She and Rigel would have understood each other very well.

He looks at Bryson, the leader of their cell, who comes to a decision. "Bring everyone," he says. "All the cell leaders we have in the city. And you'll come, and Lyme, once —" he makes an apologetic gesture. "And Coin's ex-military commander should be there too."

"Boggs," Marius supplies. He's a good, solid soldier; Marius likes him. "Leave the Mockingjay out of this. She doesn't need to be here."

"No children," Bryson agrees. "They've played their part. It's time we left them well enough alone."

Marius thinks of Selene and Dash, currently out on rescue detail, and says nothing.

They meet in the open, no more dealings underground or in secret bunkers where the losing party might be done away with quickly and quietly. Paylor comes alone, and Marius has seen propos and recorded footage but it didn't do justice to the amount of charisma and quiet power packed into the smaller woman's compact frame.

"I assume you had your reasons," Paylor says. Unlike the Thirteen soldiers she wears civilian clothing, torn and patched and blood-stained. She seems utterly indifferent to her appearance in a way that makes Marius wonder if she has used it for effect before when talking with rebel commanders safe in their bunkers in pristine white and grey clothing.

"There will be a trial," Lyme says. All the Victor polish has worn off now, or she deliberately chosen to let it go. "You're welcome to stay and listen. You probably should, since you risked your life for her more than anyone."

But of course they're not here to discuss justifications for overthrowing Coin and undermining her plans. Paylor is an action-oriented strategist, and she can look ahead to the future. It's an odd feeling, after months of sneaking and guerrilla attacks and knowing that at any minute he and his team could be snatched away and never seen again, to realize that for the first time, Marius and his side really do have the upper hand. They have Coin. They have Snow. They have military power. They have Beetee and a number of Coin's high command. They have more of Coin's people trickling in by the hour.

Paylor could make a play with what she has, the remaining Coin-loyal soldiers, but it would be a long, protracted struggle, and more people would die. Another Alma Coin, in her position, absolutely would, for the chance to seize power rather than hand it over to these upstarts. Now, Marius thinks with a low drumroll sounding in his head, is the moment they will see what Paylor is made of.

"We need to look forward," Paylor says simply. "We've come out of a war. The people are celebrating now, but soon they'll be confused, hungry, impatient — they'll want to know why the war hasn't fixed everything right now. I think it's important that we come together. Whatever happened before, whatever happens now with Coin, we need to do it together. A united front. The people can't be trying to figure out who fought for which side, questioning everyone's motives. Either we fought for freedom or we didn't. That should be the end of it."

"I'm fine with that, as long as they're willing to work with us," says one of the other cell leaders, a stubborn expression crossing his face.

Lyme holds up a hand. "Details later," she says, clipped, and the others fall silent. "We can all sit down and hash out exactly what to do if someone wants to take some sort of stand later. For now, we join together."

Paylor nods. "One other thing," she says. "You need to choose a leader. I understand why you're all here, and I even approve, but the people will need a spokesperson for the rebellion. Someone to speak for the movement now that Coin will be discredited — and more importantly, someone who can move people to action for peace and reconciliation, not vengeance and retribution. You can't do that with a team of cell leaders. You need to choose one person to speak for you."

Marius didn't realize he'd glanced at Lyme until she flings up her hands. "Don't look at me," she says, with such vehemence that she startles the entire delegation into laughter. Even Paylor's mouth twitches in a smile. "Look, we need four things for a rebel spokesperson moving forward. Someone with experience, someone who was visible throughout the rebellion, someone who was on the ground during the fight, and someone relatable, who people from the districts can trust. I've got the experience and the fighting and people know me, but the face of the rebellion can't be a face of privilege, no matter what I've done since I got here." She raises an eyebrow at Paylor. "I think it's perfectly clear to everyone in this room that there's only one person who can actually pull this off."

Regardless of whether Paylor had that particular outcome in mind when she raised the discussion, she knows better than to add her voice to it, and the rest of them come to a quick decision in her favour. As for the rest of it — Coin's loyalists, the official transfer of Coin's command codes, the dissemination of military power — that can wait. For now they don't have to worry about a coup from two sides, and that makes Marius' life a little less hellish for a while.

And now the rebellion has its voice to shepherd the people from chaos into the future, an ordinary woman who saw what needed to be done and did it, and inspired countless others to drag themselves through mud and blood and fire simply because they couldn't imagine not following her anywhere. Yes, Marius thinks as they head back to the temporary command base, Rigel definitely would have liked Paylor. And so (regret squeezes his chest hard enough to hurt) would Brin.

* * *

They almost don't let her do it.

Most of Petra's broadcasts didn't make it to District 13, but there are plenty of rebels who were stationed throughout the broadcast who saw her, proud and furious in her white suit, spitting cold rage as she counselled against the cause. And Petra can stir up feelings of national fervour and loyalty but she's never been good at wheedling, or making herself small and pitiful to stir another to sympathy.

"I need to look him in the eye, that's all," Petra says, gripping her cane tight. The harsh rattle-wheeze of the last of the air leaving Emory's lungs haunts her, and Brutus still hasn't unstuck from his grief haze. Bees buzz and dance beneath her skin. "If you know anything about me, you'll know I was his most loyal defender my whole life. Wouldn't you be embarrassed?"

That's an image training tactic, asking questions and letting the audience answer them, assuming that you're feeling the same way. Petra is not embarrassed; she feels half a hundred emotions, everything from whirling confusion to lashing rage, but embarrassment is not one of them. She is what the Program and her mentor made her, and that is not her fault. But these rebels won't understand that.

"There are security concerns —"

"If you can't defend an elderly prisoner against one disabled visitor, then I question whoever made up the guard roster," Petra says, borrowing a tone of mild dryness from Brutus. He does it better. "Someone can stand in the room with us, I don't care. But I need to see him." She exhales, digs her nails into her palm. "Please."

And so they agree, in the end, like Petra knew they would, because Selene might have made her angry when she said it but she wasn't wrong: it is almost always easier to give in and let Petra have her way than to try to change her mind. She rehearses her speech the entire way there, running over the perfect opening in her head, the right questions to flay the president's hypocrisy to the bone, to make him see exactly how much he'd done her wrong.

All of it vanishes when Petra steps into the room and stands face to face with Coriolanus Snow, stripped of his roses and his opulence but wearing the amused, sly smile of one who is expecting some new trick and is prepared to be amused. When he recognizes Petra the smile slides off his face, eyes widening for a split-second before it's replaced with a calm wariness.

Petra's breaths sound loud in her ears. She can't remember her opening, her perfect salvo to throw him off-guard. What she says instead is, "Was any of it true?"

Snow gives her a long, speculative sort of look. "I'm told there will be a trial," he says. "And I think you know better than to ask questions you already know the answers to."

Petra slashes one hand through the air to cut him off, a sharp gesture that shocks her in her own rudeness even as she ploughs straight through. "Not that. Everything they've said, everything Ronan's told me, I believe them." It hurts to say, hurts worse to know that's true. "I don't need to come here to ask you about that. I'm talking about everything else, just … you and me. The cookies and the suits and calling me brave and a soldier and making me feel like I was important, like I mattered." Petra's eyes burn but she refuses to cry, not this time. "I never felt broken or — or damaged, or underestimated or misunderstood. The whole Capitol, everyone drove me crazy, nobody understood me, but you did. At least, I thought you did, and I loved you for it. That's what I'm talking about." She stands up straight, squares her shoulders. "Sir, I need to know. Was any of it real?"

Snow tilts his head, and there's a glint to his eyes for a moment before he sighs and closes them. When they open again the calculation is gone, leaving him looking tired and a little disappointed. "If I tell you no, that none of it meant anything, will that make it easier for you?"

Petra hisses. That's not what she wants. She wants — what does she want? What she wants is none of this to be real, what she wants is an impossible reality where she can have both sides, her loyalty to the president who made her feel special and a world where that same man didn't torture and murder and lie and sell people for sex against their will. "I just want to know why. I don't understand how you could do all those things to everyone else but treat me like you did. I'm not special, I'm not —" Petra stops, loses her train. Tries again. "I won, just like everyone else. So why me?"

"Because it was easy," Snow says. Petra rears back but he leans forward, eyes glittering. "Petra, you're right — you're a Victor, you won your Games like everyone else — but you're also wrong. You are different, you are special: you admitted it yourself, you _loved_ me. Do you understand how rare that is? You don't hate me, you don't fear me, you don't even want anything from me. Not even my family gives me that. Your district puts out its perfect little soldiers, all the loyalty with just the right amount of fear and wariness. You weren't like that. And it took so little: remember your favourite cookies, praise your strength, call you brave. It was nice to look at once thing I'd made and see some honest good, for once."

He sounds so passionate, so intense, so full of vigour, none of the bitterness and frustration that has clouded him as the rebellion gained ground over the past months. For a moment Petra feels it in her chest, a rising echo — but then she thinks of all the others, who were never given the chance to see it because he wanted it that way. Disappointment crushes hard, in herself and the man she held so high for so long, but she can't go back. Not anymore.

"It worked," Petra says, her voice clear and free of trembling, thank her trainers for that. "And I'll never forgive you for it."

She turns her back and limps out, and he doesn't try to stop her.

When the rebels bring her back to the hospital, Brutus is waiting for her.

"Sweetheart," he croaks out, voice raw and rasping, "where the hell did you go?"

"I had something I needed to do," Petra says, gripping her cane to stop herself from making any defensive gestures. "I didn't think you'd —" _notice? care?_ With Emory lying dead in the hospital morgue, what did it matter where Petra went anymore? "I didn't think it mattered," she says finally.

"It matters," Brutus says. "Petra, for fuck's sake, I go looking for you and I can't find you, nobody knows where you are, it's still a war zone out there, you could've been —"

"I could've been dead, right?" Petra bursts out. "Because I'm the only one left and I'm still broken, I'm not soldier material no matter how much I want to be, even the president only liked me because I made him feel good about himself, because I was so easy to — to seduce with a few cookies and stupid compliments! If I'd died in the bombing and Emory was still alive then at least she'd be _useful_ —"

Something snaps in Brutus' face, and he closes the distance and crushes her into his arms. Petra's cane clatters to the floor, and pain slams through her face as the pressure behind her eyes mounts and she won't, she can't cry now, it's been so long, but her mentor's strong, broad fingers comb through her hair and his head bends to rest on top of hers and he rocks her back and forth.

"Don't you ever say that," Brutus says, sharp and tender all at once. "Don't you dare. You're my girl and you're perfect, you hear me? Petra. Honey. I love you, and I went crazy for a minute there but am gonna be here for you starting right the fuck now."

Petra freezes. She runs her memory back over the past few years but comes up blank, and she starts shaking, her legs giving out from under her. "You've never said that before."

Brutus lets out a breath, tickling against her hair. "I was a stoic dumbass before. You're my baby girl, and I love you, and you've been so strong, sweetheart, but now I'm gonna take care of you."

He lifts her up into his arms, cradling her against his chest, and Petra turns her face into his shoulder and feels the tears release.


	14. Chapter 14

Claudius intended to sit down with Selene and see where her head was at after the battle, really he did. She'd lost her commander, and she'd made it through the final assault with the grim-eyed determination and crazed grin he recalled from years of studying Arenas, enough rage to push her past the grief and whatever other unhelpful emotions might be clawing at her without making her sloppy, but that couldn't hold up long term. She'd have to crack eventually, and after everything during the war Claudius had a front seat to what happened when Selene tried too hard to shove things down only for it to bubble to the surface at the wrong moment. The last thing they needed was another displacement break where she snapped and tried to murder someone barehanded.

He meant to do it after Emory died, really, only watching her lie there, stuffed full of tubes and who knows what else while the doctors removed all the instruments and the life trickled out of her in rattles and gasps — watching Brutus break down until Lyme kicked them out and he had to stand there in the hallway, staring at the paintings on the wall while taking in absolutely none of it — it's clear his head isn't in the right place to comfort anyone. You can't stitch up someone else's arm if you've got a sucking chest wound, and Marius had Selene and Dash out on cleanup duty anyway, and so Claudius took a few hours to lie down and try to clear his head.

After that — he's not sure what happens. Claudius gets them pulled off the survivor hunt because more often than not it ends up being corpse retrieval and Dash keeps getting paler each time they uncover another one. Selene is a little wild and snappish, biting the heads off anyone who says the wrong thing, but that's expected, and there's no time to pull her aside. It's not that she's avoiding him, Claudius has a lifetime of practice and a good ear for it, it's that the rest of the rebellion is doing it for her.

By the time they have a minute alone, he's not sure what to say, because Selene is … fine.

Well. She's not fine, obviously she's anything but fine, but time has kept moving and she's transitioned into a holding pattern that works. She's lost the alarming edge and come down to a cool professionalism that would make her superiors proud, a real credit to the service — except Claudius can't imagine she'd ever had anything like that in her file in her entire life. In fact, every time he thinks of the trainers writing this up as a perfect case of grief transferred to action in a healthy process of recovery, tiny alarm bells start blaring in the back of his head.

Selene isn't fine, she's pretending, but she's getting the job done and this time she isn't giving off vibes of cracking any time soon. There's nothing to write her up about, nothing to approach Marius with, because from a Peacekeeping perspective there's nothing wrong. Pushing her now would definitely force a breakdown, and that would interfere with her ability to do her job.

"Here," Selene says, handing him a bottle of water, tinny-tasting from sitting in her pack in the cheap metal canister all day. "Compliments of the non-busted water main over there."

"Cheers to surviving infrastructure," Claudius says. He takes a swig and hands it back without looking at her, even though all he wants to do is study her, look for the cracks, find anywhere he could use as his point of entry. It's not right, letting her keep working without dealing with her grief — Selene, Dash, Marius, all of them — but she's not a Victor. She doesn't have the luxury of six months post-Arena to lie around with her mentor petting her hair and feeding her mood stabilizers and promising to keep her safe. She's a Peacekeeper, and that means work comes first.

Claudius understands it, but his teeth clench anyway. He can't help the feeling that if he knew more, if he were better at this, somehow, he'd find a way for her to work through it without having to push it down or fall apart. But he can't drag her into the backyard for sparring, and even if he could, push Selene and she'll clam up tight and never open up again. And so, he answers Selene's odd look with a dismissive gesture and picks up his pack again.

Even with Rigel's death a vague, unsettling presence in the background — his body lies in state with the others in a commandeered morgue, waiting until they can find someone with the time and resources to start contacting families about what to do with them — it's still better than staying with the other Victors, where so many dead clouds the air like toxic fumes. Claudius ends up bunking over with the squad more nights than not, his presence an unspoken agreement, and if he can't spar with them and tuck them in and give them meds he can at least make sure they're eating and getting a few hours of sleep.

(Turns out the same techniques he used on Lyme in Thirteen about being a good example work on Marius, too. Marius even glares and snipes at him the exact same way about being.a manipulative brat. Claudius may as well be home.)

One night Claudius stirs, drawn awake for uncertain reasons as the room is quiet — until his eyes adjust and he sees that while Dash is still curled against the wall in his coat, Selene's blankets lie tossed and empty. Claudius slides to his feet, pulls on his jacket and boots and heads up to the roof, where he's learned Selene likes to go when she's feeling thinky at night.

"Stalker," Selene says without looking when Claudius drops down next to her. Her breath puffs in front of her face in a white cloud.

"I'd've brought booze if I had any," Claudius says, keeping it light. "But around here the only places I know to pilfer have the fluffy stuff."

"Yeah, no, I'll pass." Selene looks out over the city grid, the usual cacophony of neon and flashing lights dimmed in the postwar effort to draw a reasonable amount of power from the diminished grids. "You know I don't come up here because I want to talk about my feelings, right?"

Claudius winces. "I'm not —"

Selene snorts, a faint undercurrent of amusement colouring the sound even through the exasperation. "I know you're not. I can hear you _not_ all the way over here."

He runs a hand over his hair, which has actually started to feel like hair again and not like bristles standing out against his scalp. Claudius very carefully avoids any inflammatory phrases like 'I'm worried about you' or any variations on 'I care' when Selene is squirrelly. "Nobody's talking about feelings," he says finally. "I'm just making sure you're okay."

Selene shrugs. "Rigel's dead. We killed the people who shot him. There's no point in revenge because they're our people and we started it, so." She flaps one hand in a sharp gesture that indicates nothing and everything at the same time. "You tell me."

Claudius lets out a breath. The worst part about this whole war is that the sides were nowhere as clear-cut as the media war would like everyone to believe, the good guys and the bad guys with strong lines drawn down the middle, _you're either with us or against us_ where everyone knew their place. If not for Brutus, Rigel might not have turned in time. In that world, Claudius might have faced off against Selene and the others at the mansion, stood back as the rebels shot them dead without ever knowing what he lost.

"I know we can't spare ammo," he says finally, "but I think I can scare up some crossbows, as long as we gather up the bolts after. You want to shoot some rubble with me?"

Selene glances at him. "You're not even trying to be sneaky this time."

"No I'm not," Claudius says. "I'm tired, and you're right, we're not talking about feelings, but we also aren't sleeping. I figure that's the next best thing."

She hesitates a moment, then stretches out and cracks her joints. "Yeah, all right," Selene says. "But I get first pick."

* * *

Lyme suggests they wait to bring the last of the Victors from Thirteen until everything settles down a bit, until they're sure there's somewhere to put them that isn't going to explode or have its access to running water cut off. That place ends up being the Peacekeeper barracks in the centre of the city — Marius' idea — since it's fortified and well stocked and has enough rooms and showers and kitchens for everyone, and those who want to bunk together can, and those who want to be alone with nothing but them and four walls and a lock between them and everyone else can do that too.

Plus, he points out with a sensitivity and clarity of thought that surprises Lyme until she remembers who he is, what he's done, what he'll have seen, the dorms are utilitarian in a way that Capitol apartments aren't. Those Victors who've spent a lot of time in those apartments — he pauses, doesn't say doing what, lets the silence sink in until Lyme makes the connection and the guilt slams her hard in the chest with all the years of her privilege and protection — won't want somewhere with plush carpets and elaborate furniture. Somewhere plain and serviceable will suit them just fine.

And so the Victors move to the barracks, and once they're settled a hovercraft brings in Beetee, Rokia, Johanna, Annie and Haymitch to stay with the rest of them. After everything Lyme still feels the spectre of exhaustion hovering over her no matter how many hours of sleep she gets, and the nights Claudius spends with the Scouts she mostly lies awake staring at the ceiling trying not to imagine him bleeding out in an alley with a stranger's knife in his back, but she has to admit the reunions are … nice. About damn time something goes right for once.

"Brought you a present," Johanna Mason calls out when they land, sticking out her thumb at Annie as Finnick lets out a wild whoop and tears across the landing strip.

He catches his wife in a mad embrace that Lyme looks away from before she develops some kind of blood sugar disease, but when Johanna snorts and tries to stroll away, hands in her pockets, Finnick catches her by the arm. "Right, yeah, because you're just the messenger," Finnick chides, and ignores the shifty roll to Johanna's eyes and pulls her in close.

Across the way Adessa has brought Eibhlin to Beetee, who's gathered his girl in for a hug that would put the emotionally distant district to shame. Eibhlin has a knit hat and an oversized sweater and she's babbling into Beetee's chest, asking him if her decryptions helped, if the plans to remote-disable the bombs worked as smoothly as they'd hoped since they couldn't run any tests or simulations, as Beetee murmurs softly into the top of her head. After a minute he glances up and exchanges a wordless look with Adessa that speaks volumes.

Katniss, on the other hand, regards Haymitch levelly with her arms crossed over her chest, though Lyme catches the pinch of her mouth, way her nostrils flare and her eyebrows pucker. She wants it to be real but can't trust it yet, isn't willing to do this in front of witnesses. "You're sober," Katniss says, somewhere between clipped and trying for humour and failing.

Haymitch tilts his head. "You're standing."

"I'm sane," Peeta pipes up, raising one hand in a parody of a schoolboy. When they both turn to stare at him he grins, all boyish shamefacedness. "What? I thought we were stating things that started with S. Except I'm not really, not yet, but I wanted to participate."

Haymitch snorts, and Katniss' gaze softens, and the brittle air around the pair dissolves. They'll be all right, Lyme thinks, as long as they have time and therapy and no more cameras asking them to play their roles.

The last to leave the hovercraft is Rokia, from District 6, looking small and thin in her grease-stained coveralls. Phillips lets out a breath of relief and starts to run, but Lyme reaches over to grip his arm and slow him down. "Don't fall and break your leg first thing," she says, using the same tone she would on Brutus, rough and teasing but not quite mocking. "How's that gonna make her feel?"

She's here because Brutus asked her, because Phillips has spent the last few months in a froth worried about his girl and Brutus didn't want him to wait for the hovercraft alone, but they don't have the same camaraderie. Phillips shoots her a look that's very Brutus but with a dash of uncertainty, but then he snorts. "I ain't broken," he says, but he closes his hands into a loose fist to hide the tremor that still hasn't quite left his fingers.

"That's not the point," Lyme says. Rokia's shoulders are hunched up around her ears as she shuffles over toward them, sending Lyme's mentor radar pinging. "She's going to want her blame herself for what happened, so she'll be looking for any reason she can. Don't let her say it's her fault."

"Of course it's not her fault —"

"Of course it's not," Lyme agrees, speaking faster as Rokia draws close, her hand clutched around her upper arm. "I'm just telling you what she's thinking."

But it's not her job to tell a mentor about his kid, even if she has a hunch, and so she steps back and lets Phillips and Rokia have their moment.

Lyme exhales as she leaves the hangar as the rebels comprising the impromptu welcoming committee move in to greet the Victors and take them to their rooms. With everyone here there's one last unpleasant holdover from the war left: the memorial service for all the Victors who didn't live to see a time of peace. Doubtless there will be a public day of mourning set up once the new government gets its feet under it, but the Victors have had enough of pomp and ceremony — and their dead friends can't wait that long.

Personally Lyme wants nothing to do with it: no more grief and guilt and sadness, no more death and mourning and wondering how many people hate her because she's alive and so are both her kids. Lyme has spent more time with the waving grasses in the field of sacrifice and the earthy scent of fresh graves than she would ever care to remember. What she wants now is to move on, not wallow in shared sorrow where the feelings of others will claw at her and drag her underwater until she drowns.

But she can say that because she's safe, and there are districts now whose villages would stand empty if everyone went home today. Even Lyme being able to say she's tired of the quiet, crushing sadness is a privilege, made all the more sharp by the knowledge that while District 2 had more deaths than the other districts, they also walked away with far more survivors.

The day of the memorial itself is a silent one. They agree on no speeches or eulogies, which could stir up negative feelings between the various living Victors; instead, the informal ceremony combines a mixture of funeral traditions from the various districts. It's a good compromise, sentiment without devolving into the kind of performative oneupmanship that tends to happen in public grieving rituals, leaving the private conversations between mourners and the dead to happen in their own time.

They take a hovercraft out to a clearing by a small lake a short flight out from the main city. There's no Victor Affairs office to show up with all the necessary supplies, and they weren't about to ask for anything with all the resources dedicated to surviving the immediate reconstruction effort. Instead, the Victors work together that morning to bring the whole thing together, a show of quiet solidarity that, while still wreathed in death, lets Lyme feel the web of connection between them more than any artificial propo opportunity.

They hunt together for wildflowers for the District 2 Victors to scatter instead of seeds; the able-bodied help Johanna Mason and Cora dig up a pair of small seedling trees from the edge of the wood and plant them in the middle of the clearing. They gather stones from the lake shore that the Ones stack into piles, one stone atop the other. Beetee and Eibhlin set up a string of solar-powered lanterns to light the clearing at night. A group of various Victors, like those from Four and Six, whose funerals involve communal meals, managed to scrounge up some food from the barracks and pass it around, with as much attention to the favourites of the dead as possible.

Several of the districts with no one left find echoes in the traditions of other districts, causing strange, dawning moments as cultures and rituals overlap across the previously iron lines. Eleven shares the scattering of flowers with Two; Ten builds piles of rocks like One, and Lyme marvels a little at what could have been isolated, almost competitive demonstrations of personal grief transforms into something deeper.

Finally Katniss Everdeen starts a song, her voice clear and low, and after the first round of melody Claudius picks up his travel violin and joins her with a haunting sweep of the strings. A few of the more musically inclined join in, gradually adding layers of harmony until their voices float over the lake and the birds fall silent. Lyme has never been one for music other than to encourage Claudius in his pursuits but her skin prickles anyway, and several others wipe away tears or turn their faces to the sky.

It's funny, really. Lyme expected maudlin wallowing in grief, but as the afternoon passes, she watches as the others stand up straighter, their eyes bright but the lines of their faces easing, their shoulders gradually relaxing as though shrugging off the dead muttation they'd been dragging with them for miles over hard terrain. There's still sorrow there, and anger, and anyone who thinks the journey is over would be naive and an idiot, but as she looks around the group she feels herself part of a shared exhale.

They are the Victors, survivors of a brutal joke and uneasy symbols in a world that likely has no idea how it wants to place them, but for now, right now — for the first time in seventy-five years, maybe — they're united. It's a weird feeling.

The music fades, and the birds and the rustle of the breeze in the trees picks up to fill the sudden ringing silence. They stand together for a few moments, not speaking, then by some unspoken agreement they turn and head back to the waiting hovercraft.

* * *

Go figure that saving the world meant losing Devon's legs.

Devon won't say it, and neither will Brutus, at least not without either of them punching themselves in the head for collapsing into anything so selfish, but Artemisia is perfectly willing to go there. Say what you will about the Capitol, but their bionics division could take a mangled mess of a human being and make them pretty for the cameras in a week, maybe two. They might have focused on expediency and attractiveness over true rehabilitation — not to mention how Artemisia would have walked out two cup sizes larger if Lyme hadn't been standing guard like a snarling bulldog — but odds are they would have worked their magic on the stumps of Devon's legs and fitted him with working prosthetics before the rebellion finished cleaning up the bodies.

But anyone working for the Games complex has been arrested until the trials and the entire facility closed down, which means no miracle legs for Devon, only a slow, agonizing recovery in the field hospital as Artemisia tries very hard not to chew off her own arm or someone else's head.

"You wouldn't even want that kind of accelerated timeframe," a doctor explains to her with incredible enforced patience, and Artemisia would be impressed if she weren't so punchy. "The kind of quick-healing that the Games doctors put the Victors through is never a good idea, and often causes more problems in the long run. Look at what happened to your youngest Victor because she wasn't allowed to heal at a reasonable rate. Peeta Mellark was given a prosthesis far too soon and was never given physical therapy or brought back to the Capitol for a refit. Both of them suffered incredible pain and underwent a retrograde recovery."

Artemisia takes a second to enjoy the private image of screaming and punching the wall like a caveman, cracking her knuckles against the plaster and smearing blood against the pale green wall. Except even in her mind the doctor only stands there and turns that implacable stare on her, making the whole thing far less satisfying even as a mental exercise. "So you're saying we have to wait," she says, forcing her tongue between her back teeth to stop her jaw from sending spikes of pain through her temples.

"Yes," the doctor says, and Artemisia swallows a flare of temper because she refuses to be like the Capitol refugees complaining in the relocation camps yelling _do you know who I am!_ at the poor rebels in charge of food distribution. "We don't have access to that kind of elite technology, and even if we did, I couldn't in good conscience recommend it. Accelerated healing is for burn victims and celebrities undergoing radical transformative surgery, not double amputations."

"Ugh," Artemisia says, dragging a hand down her face. "Okay, great, thanks. That wasn't sarcastic, I'm just — you know, processing."

So no legs and no magic miracle cure, which means Devon will have to stay in bed for months doing limited physical therapy and letting others do the hard work of putting the country back together. At least — Artemisia thinks, privately, again glad that nobody else can hear her — losing his legs is enough of a tradeoff for making it out alive when so many others didn't that she doesn't have to deal with a resurgence of Devon's post-Arena survivor's guilt. If Artemisia had to help Devon justify his existence on top of everything else, she'd probably end up screaming until her face split in half.

Besides, if anyone needs to prove herself worthy of surviving it's Artemisia, who's never done a damn thing for anybody in her life, but that would take far too much introspection when she has to come up with new amputation-inspired nicknames for Devon every time she sees him to make him laugh and take the sting out of the situation. The last thing he wants right now is for Misha to start treating him like he's made of glass.

She finds him back in his room after a physio session, propped up by the window overlooking the city. Not exactly picturesque, but it's gotten better now that they've cleared out the last of the bodies and Capitol traps in this sector, and Devon glances at her when she comes in. "Hey, sexist half-man alive," Artemisia says, and Devon's mouth twitches but he doesn't laugh. All right, not one of her best, but she can only be so creative on demand day after day. "How are you holding up?"

"Will you marry me?" Devon says.

Artemisia stops dead. She makes a theatrical show of looking for hidden cameras to mask the part where she actually lets her gaze flick to the best spots to hide a crew, quick and unobtrusive, but it doesn't look like there's anyone tucked in anywhere. The last thing she needs is some kind of postwar feel-good special about the legless Victor and his patient, loyal girlfriend. Just thinking about it makes her teeth ache. "They give you the good drugs again?" she says instead, keeping her tone light.

"Mish, I'm serious," Devon says. His skin is waxy under the usual bronze — they must have worked him hard today — and Artemisia twitches to go run her fingers through his hair and tease him until he relaxes but the question and the odd, serious light in his eyes, almost feverish, freezes her in place. "I almost died. A lot of people did die. I don't want to think about what might've happened. It makes you think —"

"If you say 'about what's really important' —" Artemisia says, hearing the edge of warning in her tone but unable to stop it. She can already feel her body fighting to turn, put her weight on the back foot, ready to run.

"You can make fun of me all you want, but it's true," Devon says, and there's the Brutus jaw, the stubborn jut that everyone in his mentor branch learns at one time or another. Snow on a shitpile, this is really happening. "Mish, I love you, and everything's changed and we don't know what's going to happen, but I know that you're one of the best things that's ever happened to me. I don't want anything to take that away."

Artemisia exhales, slowly, and she fights against the survival instinct and makes her way into the room one step at a time. She sits down in the chair next to the bed, propping one foot on the bed rail to give herself enough space that she can breathe. "And you think … putting a piece of paper on it will keep the bad things from happening?"

Devon flushes dark. "No, I —"

"Being married didn't stop what happened to Cora and Burt," Artemisia says, and she manages to make the words come out gentle instead of cruel and savage. Look how much she's grown. "It didn't stop Cecelia from dying in the Arena. It's just a piece of paper. The universe doesn't care about paper, babe."

Devon's mouth thins, and his eyes spark with the first sign of fire that Artemisia has seen since before the mine blew his legs off. That would be a good thing, if he weren't trying to tie her to an arcane courtship ritual that gives her hives. Why couldn't he get this passionate about bees or pyrotechnics? "It's not about the paper," he says. Artemisia braces herself because this is his passionate persuasive voice, the one he brings out when he's trying to save his kids' lives with an emergency medpak or bottle of water. She bites back an automatic protest because he's _sponsor-wrangling_ her. "It's —"

"Babe," Artemisia says, firmly this time, and now there's an edge but she lets it happen. "If you think getting me to write 'no takebacks' on a piece of paper is the only thing stopping me from leaving you after all this, we have bigger problems."

Devon falls silent with a low hiss, sinking back against the pillows. Artemisia drags a hand down her face again, and she has the semi-hysterical thought that they all do the same gesture, her and Devon and Emory and even Claudius. She's not sure if it started as a Brutus thing or a Lyme thing or if the two of them got it from each other, but now both mentor branches share so many mannerisms and catchphrases all tangled together in a weird family of expression that they must seem impenetrable from the outside even without all the murder.

"Here's the thing," Artemisia says finally. "You're upset. You're hurting. I get that. But if you're worried that I'm going to leave because you've lost your legs or whatever, then getting married isn't going to magically make that better, and I'm pretty sure Brutus would tell you the same thing. And I can't do the thing, I can't be that person who's kind and patient and reassures you every time you're worried that I'm not going anywhere and I'll be by your side forever no matter what because let's be honest, just the thought of that makes me want to choke. I don't blame you for freaking out, I just — I can't keep finding new ways to prove it to you. You and me, we are what we are, like always, and you either trust me or you don't."

Nobody from Champion Productions, the Capitol movie film that produces sweeping romantic dramas on characters who are thin veneers of popular victors, has ever made one about Artemisia. She can't imagine why.

Devon gives her a sideways look. "You know you sound like one of those guys who refuses to put a label on things, right, like 'why do we have to ruin it, baby, you know how I feel about you'…"

"Hey, fuck you," Artemisia says easily, and this time Devon laughs. "I haven't let the bruises fade, have I? The doctors have yelled at me every single day about it. And as soon as we get you out of here we'll figure out a way for us to spar, even if it is a lot of rolling around."

She reaches over and presses her thumb against a mottled purple spot on Devon's shoulder, and Devon's eyes flutter closed in reflex. Twos — at least the Careers — don't bother with rings or jewellery unless they feel like it; instead the only sign that matters is leaving bruises on each other's skin. In all their years together, they never missed a day of couple-sparring unless one of them was in the Capitol for Games-month — the whole point of sparring and the bruises it leaves behind is to act as a constant reset and reminder. Since the accident Artemisia has had to settle for punching him or leaving steady pressure on one spot with her thumb, which doesn't have the same reassuring effect.

"Yeah," Devon says, a little breathless. "Yeah, okay. I'm just going crazy, Mish, everyone has something to do and all I can do is lie here."

"You know what Brutus would say," Artemisia says, and Devon gives her a sour look but she forges on ahead anyway. "The most important job you can do right now is focus on getting better."

"Fuck _you_ ," Devon says, reaching back like he's going to throw his pillow at her except she leans over and fluffs it for him solicitously. "If I can't find something useful to do I'm going to chew off my arm."

"Let me see what I can do." Artemisia flicks him between the eyes, and when he makes a face at her she bends down and kisses the top of his head. "I'll be back. Don't blame me later when you wish you could go back to relaxing without anybody bothering you."

She heads out of the hospital, glad to shake it behind her and head out into the city even if she has to walk the paths she's memorized to avoid the worst of the damage. And it's funny, even after all these years Artemisia's first impulse is to head over to find Brutus and run this by him first, but — no. Brutus wouldn't like it, he'd say Artemisia has no right giving Devon anything that could upset him, he'd say Devon needs to focus on himself and put his own emotional health first instead of running himself ragged for other people, and he'd definitely say it isn't Artemisia's job to stick her nose into the middle of things.

Except that Brutus has his hands full keeping Petra sane in the middle of her early life crisis, and he's got grief and guilt and a whole mess of his own problems. It's made him double down on trying to control everything he can, and that means clutching his living Victors close. Artemisia won't deny that Brutus wants what's best for Devon, and in any other year she wouldn't get smart and try to argue, but the world's on fire and sometimes you have to break the rules. Devon's right: he needs to feel useful, and for Devon that means people.

Brutus won't like it, but Artemisia knows exactly what to do.

It takes a bit of convincing, but in the end Artemisia doesn't actually have to try all that hard. It's not super high on the list of priorities with resources and infrastructure near the top, and everyone worrying about getting the train lines back up and running so they can start shipping supplies and personnel back out to the districts, but it's the kind of thing that will help morale and also make the new government — or whatever they're calling it, since no one's announced themselves the new illustrious leader or started talking yet about how they're making any kind of major decisions, not that this is Artemisia's forte — look a little less like upstarts in the eyes of people who need to be reassured.

And the thing is, absolutely crucial or not, it will have to get done, and the fact that no one's done it speaks just as much to the fact that no one wants to. It's not fun, it's not pleasant, and it takes a certain type of personality to be able to do it without folding up or shutting themselves off completely.

"That was fast," Devon says when Artemisia comes back. His eyebrows draw together in suspicion but his eyes flick to the side pretty quick, and Artemisia would pump her fist in triumph except that's tasteless even for her. "You find something to keep me busy?"

Artemisia says nothing, but drops the list into his lap. He leafs through it, frowning, but no recognition hits his eyes, not yet, only confusion. "It's the names of everyone they've identified who was killed in the fighting," Artemisia says. Brutus is going to murder her and grind her up into oatmeal to feed the refugees, but as long as it works, he can suck it. "They need someone to find and contact the next of kin, see what they want done with the bodies. If they want them cremated, sent home for burial, that kind of thing."

Devon lets out a long breath and lets his finger wander over the page, idly scanning, but then he stops. "I think I know this one. Peacekeeper. I mean, I don't know her family, but the name rings a bell —"

Artemisia reaches over and hits the button to call for a nurse to bring a chair. "See? You're a natural for this already. They'll set you up in an office for an hour or so a day so you can look through the Peacekeeper database, the Capitol directories, all that, and talk to any rebels you need to. They'll bring a phone to your room so you can do the actual calling from here."

Devon looks up at her, eyes bright. "Thanks, Mish," he says. "I know what you're thinking, too, Brutus is going to say you shouldn't have done it, but this is exactly what I needed. I need to help people, and this is something I can actually be good at. So thank you."

"Yeah, yeah," Artemisia says, borrowing Lyme's stock phrase for when anything gets too feelings-y. "Save it for the families."

The rebels send a car, since Artemisia didn't think helping Devon navigate his chair across half the city would be a great use of his energy, and once he's there she leaves him to it. She wanders the halls idly, not bothering to pay attention to where her feet take her, until she looks up and finds herself in front of Lyme's office.

You can take the mentor from the Victor, but you can't take the Victor from the mentor, apparently. Artemisia stares at the door for a good long second, but finally she sighs and shoves it open with her foot, hands in her pockets.

Lyme looks up in surprise, and Artemisia doesn't miss the flicker of wariness that crosses her expression for a split-second before she settles into a friendly smile. It reminds Artemisia of when she first came out, when she was bug-nuts crazy and Lyme didn't want to scare her off, and they both did this to each other in different ways and by this point it's almost funny.

"Hey girl," Lyme says. "Everything okay?"

"Devon was feeling shitty so I set him up with a job," Artemisia says, taking the couch across from Lyme's desk and sprawling artlessly across it. "Don't tell Brutus, he's gone full cuddly mentor and wants to wrap everybody in cotton wool or whatever, but." She takes a second to give Lyme a quick once-over, and when she finishes she looks up to see Lyme trying so hard to hold back a grin that her face has practically turned itself inside out.

Artemisia folds her arms. "What!"

Lyme shoots her an assessing look, gaze passing over her like a sponsor at the betting table, then she gives up the pretence and grins outright. "I'm proud of you."

Artemisia sits up so fast the blood rushes from her head and leaves her dizzy. "Ex-fuckin' _scuse_ me?"

"Yeah, girl, you heard me," Lyme says, unrelenting, and she gets up and perches on the edge of the sofa. "You noticed Devon was sad and you did something to make him feel better, and not stealing him alcohol or stitching him a dirty joke on a piece of embroidery or playing pranks on him to try to make him forget the whole thing. You found something real and substantial that will let him help a lot of people." She smiles, proud and genuine and — _ugh_. "You've come a long way."

"Ugh!" Artemisia exclaims, flopping sideways across Lyme's lap. "Why do you always have to make things weird? You're the worst."

The funny thing is, her own reaction and the movement that accompanied it felt so natural that Artemisia didn't even think about it. She doesn't notice anything strange until Lyme stills underneath her, not holding her breath or freezing because that would be an even bigger tip-off but taking very regular breaths to try to show how very normal and not-remarkable the situation is.

This isn't crawling into Lyme's lap, wracked with grief and terrified about the upcoming battle. This can't be explained away as a one-off fluke arising from a freak overflow of emotions. Artemisia could pull away, sure, say it's habit and muscle memory and nothing more, and Lyme might not believe her but she'd respect her choice.

Except, actually … Artemisia is a little tired of carrying around all that resentment, and she's missed her mentor. "You're too high," she says instead. "If you're going to make fun of me, you could at least not give me a crick in my neck."

Lyme exhales a little, but then she laughs and slides down onto the couch cushions so Artemisia can flop on her properly. She runs her fingers through Artemisia's hair, and Artemisia closes her eyes and lets the last of the anger and bitterness seep away. "You're the worst mentor," she says aloud. "See if I do anything nice for anyone ever again. I'm not going to be Emory, making jam and cookies for everyone and being weirdly attuned to everyone's needs."

"You don't need to be Emory," Lyme says, and Artemisia can hear the second half of a sentence brewing and decides to cut her off right there.

Artemisia pinches Lyme just above the knee. "If you say 'we love you just the way you are' —"

Lyme laughs and tugs her hair. "No comment."

But the worst part is that now she said it, a thought that's been worming its way through the back of Artemisia's mind for the past few days decides to eat its way to the surface. She does her best to shove it back, but apparently she doesn't do that great a job of it because Lyme taps her on the forehead and asks, "What are you thinking?"

Artemisia huffs out an irritated breath. She's not a baby Victor, she doesn't have to answer 'tell me what you're thinking' if she doesn't want to, but — fuck it. "I was thinking that Ronan hasn't come out of his room since we moved here. He's lost the most out of any of us, his kids and his friends, and Petra isn't talking to him, and I still feel shitty that none of us remembered to bring his dogs. I kept thinking maybe I should try to rustle up a checkers set and see if I can't keep him company."

"I think that's a good idea," Lyme says. "A few of us have tried, but he's always liked you, and this is a case where your irreverence might be helpful."

Artemisia isn't going to argue there. Unlike Devon, Ronan doesn't need a bunch of responsibility; the last thing he'll want is a million more people relying on him after feeling like he failed to protect so many. "Somebody in this stupid city has to play checkers," Artemisia says. "I'll go crack some skulls."

Lyme is grinning again, and Artemisia slits her eyes at her. "I'm not sorry," Lyme says, making Artemisia snort. "I have the best kids. Brutus can suck it."

"Ha," Artemisia says, flopping over onto her back. "I guess that's acceptable."

* * *

Probably the clearest sign of Ronan's age is that he's surprised when they ask him to testify. So many have died, innocents and those not so innocent but doing their best in a system designed to rope survivors into complicity, and he tries, really he does, to try to find the spark of meaning in every day but so many days run together in a wash of grey. Artemisia has taken to sitting with him, and he appreciates her company and the effort she makes, but he can't make himself find the passion for involvement in the reconstruction that his younger self might have done.

When Paylor and a small handful of her people show up at his door, Ronan almost tells them to take their subpoena and feed the hungry populace with it. Winter has hit hard, and with the broken rail lines and downed power plants and destroyed factories and granaries and all the other infrastructure damage meant to hit the Capitol where it hurts, all that has now trickled down to the people — but Ronan has sat in front of too many boxes of poison-laced cookies to know when a request is anything but.

Of course, Ronan knows better than to say anything he's thinking. Paylor and her people might not be Coriolanus, and they claim not to be this Alma Coin woman either, but Ronan didn't build his district to the heights it grew by mouthing off to each new power.

He does ask a question: "Am I testifying in the trial of Coriolanus Snow, or on my own behalf, or the others from my district?"

Paylor glances at the young, red-haired man beside her, one of the District 2 Peacekeepers who rescued Brutus from the Arena all those months ago. There was a time when Ronan would have found out everything about him, made a point to get to know him and charm him and draw him in as an unshakable ally, but not anymore. The only people Ronan can afford to care about anymore are the ones who walked through fire with him.

"There will be no Victor trials," Paylor says evenly. "In recognition of the difficulties you suffered and the unequal power dynamic even your district held with the President."

"But..." Ronan adds, when she doesn't continue yet the sentence seems to linger on, unfinished.

"There is no but," Paylor says, and now Ronan almost laughs, feeling it sharp and ugly in his chest. Paylor might be a war hero turned politician, but she is no liar. He hears the attempt to spin in her voice right along with her dislike at having done it. "From a political standpoint, you were victims and are now ordinary citizens. And as such —"

And there it is. Well, he should probably have expected nothing less, really. "You're taking the stipends," Ronan says, and she nods, once. "Everyone, or just those of us who received training? Don't worry, you can say it. There's no point in pretending we're all extremely talented athletes with a natural gift for murder."

Paylor's mouth goes thin, but she soldiers on. "In the interests of expediency, the entire Victor stipend fund has been frozen and reabsorbed into the reconstruction fund, where it can be given out as needed."

At this point Ronan hardly cares about the accounts; it's not as though anyone will be operating on credit in a postwar economy, and he could hardly expect the rebels to honour the Capitol's agreement to pay the Victors' bills each month. Once this settles they will have to figure something out, but that's a problem for later, when the country isn't teetering on the brink of starvation.

He had, however, been prepared to take on all the punishment in exchange for the rest of his Victors walking free. If Paylor is willing to lay aside all grievances in the name of a fresh start, Ronan couldn't care less about the blood money, not now. Funds will take care of itself, in time.

It's a shame all the deaths have left him numb, otherwise he might feel a bit more gleeful vindictiveness about the thought of facing Coriolanus across a courtroom and knowing that all the power lay on his side, for once. No more pretending to lose a chess game without making it obvious he'd thrown the match; no more heaving his guts out over coconut macarons. He'll sit and unleash every twisted, sordid anecdote he can unlock from his memory, no matter what manner of monster it makes him look by proxy, and he'll lock eyes with Coriolanus the whole time and never blink.

All right, maybe Ronan has enough left in him for a little relish.

"I will testify about anything you need me to," Ronan says. "You want your blood sport, I will give it to you."

Paylor's lip curls back like a cat smelling something unpleasant. "This is justice, not blood sport. We're not having another death match."

Ronan smiles, finding little humour to soften the rictus in his cheeks. "We'll see."

* * *

As the trials and reconstruction continue side by side, Claudius doesn't miss the significance of the broadcast timing. Where the Capitol once balanced executions with wedding dress fittings, the former rebels now interleave footage of gut-wrenching depositions and shaking witnesses pouring out terrible tales of excess and crimes against humanity with the good work their own people are doing across the districts. It's not a bad strategy, even with the visible strings, and Claudius' media training might have left him cynical but he recognizes the value in drawing clear lines between the old regime and the as-yet-unnamed new. It might not get supplies out faster or make food appear out of nowhere, but any hope is better than nothing. Or something.

Still, it's chilling to see direct evidence of everything he'd only heard in whispers because he'd stayed in Two as much as humanly possible in the years since his victory. It's worse to see it paraded around on television for everyone to gossip over, each awful, innards-ripping disclosure of rape or assault in front of the cameras for everyone to chew and regurgitate as the latest _did you see?_ moment, like gossiping over the nightly recaps of the Arena and the Featured Kill of the Day. There's a strange guilty pleasure about it all, and the former Scouts might be too polite to talk about it — or maybe it's all mundane to them, being in the thick of it for years — but Claudius catches Capitol citizens, rebels, and even some of the other non-elite Peacekeepers whispering about the latest tidbit of horror until they see him and trail off into awkward silence.

How are any of them supposed to have a normal life now, Claudius can't help thinking. Life as a Victor is alienating enough, with everyone having seen the Games and the interviews and thinking that means they know you and have a right to your private life. How much worse with all these horrors laid bare for public consumption? His own testimony, at least, is short, a quick statement about how Snow threatened him and his mentor and promised death to Lyme's next tribute if he didn't disappear after his Games. His involvement in Coin's trial takes longer, a few days of witness testimony and cross-examination about his time in Thirteen all the way through the attempt to murder him and Lyme in the tunnels, but by this point Claudius can face it with flat-eyed dispassion. They won, she lost, and whatever happens now is none of his business.

No one gets to see him break down on the witness stand, no one has to hear about his greatest humiliations, he doesn't have to sit there alone in front of a giant audience and recount violation after violation. But that's the reality for so many of the remaining Victors, and once this is over they'll be expected to — what? Integrate back into their home society, one that had isolated and alienated them for years out of fear or misunderstanding, and now have all the more reason to deepen that gulf?

"Everything about this sucks," Claudius declares one day when he, Selene and Dash are out on pickup. "I wish they didn't televise these stupid trials. Why don't they just throw the Victors back into the Arena and let them do the whole thing all over again?"

Selene makes a half-distracted, half-sympathetic noise, scanning the map for their destination, and Dash leans over to give Claudius a pat on the arm. "I know I sound like a grumpy old man," Claudius says, and Dash's mouth twitches a little but he doesn't take Claudius up on the opening. "And I'll stop ranting about it at the two of you, I promise, I know I'm pitching to repeat sponsors, but — I don't know. I know what I'm getting with civilians, but I didn't expect this from Peacekeepers."

"Not everyone outgrows the Victor mystique," Selene says, giving him a small, crooked grin. "I mean, when you read everyone's files and see their food allergies and sexual history and everything else, the whole hero worship part pretty much wears off. For other people, they don't get the whole gritty realism part."

Claudius, grimacing as always at the reminder of the level of detail the Scouts kept on him, decides to take his usual tack and skirt right past that part. "I guess so," he says. "And I suppose the longer you stay in the Program, the more you're likely to know any Victors in your age range, so there's some of the sheen rubbed off already. Not so much hero worship if you remember someone being thirteen and going through their awkward gangly stage."

For his part, Claudius tried looking up a few people from Residential after he won, but the awkwardness suffused everything with a choking thickness and he soon gave it up. Worse, his first friend, a boy named Foster who had taken Claudius under his wing when he first moved into Residential as a confused, lonely kid, had gotten married to a pretty girl with two little kids already by the time Claudius found him. He'd left the Program after he failed his second kill test, and now he had a job nowhere near the Centre, and he definitely didn't need a reminder of the days when he'd trained to kill people. Claudius hadn't bothered to go say hi.

He has no idea what happened to the other boys in his year, the ones Lyme passed over before choosing him. If they ended up as Scouts, no one told him, which is probably a mercy. "Did all the Scouts age out?" Claudius asks. "Or — the Twos, I mean."

"Excuse you, I definitely did," Dash says, and Claudius glances at him, startled. They don't talk a lot about Dash's time in Four, mostly out of a mutual agreement not to spend too much time on anyone's backstory, but he had always pictured Dash being a casual member of the Four Athletic Club rather than a dedicated regular. "I mean it was Four, we didn't have your ridiculous system, but I trained and I stood for the Reaping my last year. I would've gone in if they'd drawn a kid, but he was seventeen and trained with us so he didn't need me to."

And then that tribute got his head cut off, Claudius thinks, already running the math automatically, but Dash doesn't say it and that means nobody else will bring it up. Claudius holds his arm out in apology, and Dash snorts and takes the free shot, socking him right in the awkward place behind the elbow. Claudius shakes out his fingers to ease the tingling, still thinking.

Selene didn't answer the question, but he can't tell if she dodged and Dash covered for her or if she really doesn't know. Maybe sitting around and comparing bracelets is gauche in the Peacekeeper Academy. Finally she glances at him, gnawing on the inside of her lip, and says, "Not all the time, but usually. Rigel got knocked out at seventeen from a surprise injury, but until then he was frontrunner for 62. Marius was runner-up for the 63rd."

A strange shiver walks its way down Claudius' spine. He liked Rigel, a good commander who protected his kids to the end, serious about his job while maintaining a sense of humour even at the end of the world, but he wouldn't have won if he'd gone into the Arena against Enobaria. And odds are, if the mentor for 63 had chosen Marius instead, he wouldn't have had any more luck avoiding the poison Cecelia slipped into everyone's food. It's a weird thought, like the ones who die are interchangeable placeholders in a fixed event in time, and Claudius shakes it off.

Both Rigel and Marius would have been in Residential while Claudius lived there unofficially as a kid, which is a funny thought. Maybe that's why he always felt like he fit in so well with the squad; absolutely no danger of fawning or celebrity allure when they'd both read his file and remembered him as a scrawny kid with sharp elbows and a sharper face skulking in shadows, stealing knives and watching the bigger kids whenever the trainers would let him.

"Huh," Claudius says. But he knows better than to keep walking when ice crackles under his feet, and when half the Scouts are dead or missing this is not a topic he should push. He turns the discussion back to their mission, and ignores the stirring in the back of his mind that prickles at the thought of Marius in Residential because he doesn't want to jump off the platforms too soon and trick his brain into inventing a false image. There is something there, he's pretty sure, but it's always better to sneak up on buried memories than to try to charge them head on.

He tries later that night, sprawled across his cot and staring up at the ceiling while he carefully lets his mind wander around his faded memories of Residential without poking at any specific one too hard. The problem is that with the exception of a few, most of them at the very beginning, most of the older boys ended up blurring together after a while. Incidents stick out — like the boy who stole a brace of knives to give to him as a goodbye present after getting cut post Field Exam, or the one who taught him how to strap daggers under his clothes to smuggle them out of the weapons room — but not so much names, and the faces are long gone.

It's funny, his interactions with the older boys tended to fall into two categories: hanging out during free time with the ones who found the novelty of a kid brother type amusing, and sitting with the fresh fourteen-year-olds who came to his room after their first tests to steal his stuffed bear or his pillows and talk about the test. He remembers the latter more than the former; the antics were fun but they weren't memorable, not like the parade of confusion and grief and the overwhelming desire to lie down until it all went away, but trapped in the knowledge that the water would only get deeper from here. Claudius used to study their faces, doing his best to perfect it in the mirror for when it was his turn in case he didn't have the right amount of remorse.

He doesn't have any recent examples of joking around with Marius to compare against, but thanks to the war and Rigel's death and everything else, Claudius has plenty of mental pictures of Marius in quiet, shell-shocked grief. He can't imagine Marius ever sitting on his bed and hugging a teddy bear to his chest, telling Claudius about what his victim said or how the blood felt spurting through his fingers, but — he thinks of Marius outside the mansion, his voice hoarse and shoulders set, eyes shadowed and resigned as his gaze skips over Claudius then drags back to transfer unofficial temporary command of the squad — finally a distant memory shakes loose and rises slowly to the surface.

A minute later Claudius has his boots and jacket and is headed across the city for the building now commandeered by Central Command, breath puffing ahead of him in white clouds, a pillow stuffed under one arm. The city lights wash the night sky a pale orange, but unless Marius has suddenly developed a healthy work-life balance out of nowhere, he'll still be awake in his office going over logistics. Most nights he sleeps there on the couch someone dragged in for him, collapsing only when it would be irresponsible for him to continue on. Claudius has kept his mouth shut because Marius isn't under his jurisdiction and it would feel weird to bully him into eating and sleeping, but he recognizes the signs well enough.

The personnel at the door don't even question Claudius' presence despite the late hour, and sure enough, Marius opens the door right away at Claudius' knock. "What's wrong?" he asks immediately — and damned if that doesn't just sum up their lives lately.

"Nothing," Claudius says, holding out both hands. "Nothing's on fire. I just wanted to stop by."

Marius blinks at him. "It's — I don't know what time it is. It feels late."

"It is," Claudius says, and oh boy this went better in his head, his trainers will be having late-night indigestion over this, wondering where in the seventy-five Arenas he lost all his conversation skills. In the end he still can't think of a way to broach the topic, and so he grabs the pillow from under his arm and tosses it at Marius' chest. "Here. Bring it back whenever."

( _Fourteen-year-old Marius, already tall but not yet packing on the muscle that would stay with him into adulthood, standing in front of Claudius' door, eyes skidding away from making contact. He mumbles through asking for a pillow, and he has one hand closed over his wrist to hide his bracelet but his skin from fingertips to forearms is scrubbed red and raw and that tells Claudius everything he needs to know._ )

Marius catches the pillow and stares at it for a few seconds, then a muscle in his cheek twitches and he looks back at Claudius with an unreadable expression. "Didn't think you remembered."

"I didn't, not until now. Partly because you didn't ever say anything." Claudius gives him a flat stare. "You're as bad as Lene. Do all of you sign some agreement never to let any of the Victors know you remember us?"

"Mostly it's tacky," Marius says with his usual unflappable calm. "Do you really want every Peacekeeper with a tenuous connection to a Victor talking about the time the two of you sparred in Residential that one time?"

"That's not all it was and you know it," Claudius says. Now that he's placed Marius in the appropriate age range his mind has started to fill in the blanks: teaching him card tricks one evening during free time, bribing him with weapons in exchange for extra blankets, daring him to hit a girl across the room with a throwing star. "Can I come in for a bit?"

He learned years ago not to ask 'are you busy', because people like Marius are always busy, and and asking the question will remind them of it and force them either to lie for the sake of politeness or break social contract by being honest and therefore rude. Marius blinks at him again, then says "Sure," and steps away from the door.

Marius' office is just as depressing as the last time Claudius was here, scant personal belongings and sparse furniture and a hell of a lot of paperwork, but he doesn't seem to notice as he takes one end of the couch and waves Claudius over to the other. "You still have that bear?" Marius asks, tucking the pillow behind his back.

It's been long enough that he has to think about it. "I left it behind when I went full-time," Claudius says finally, once he tracks it down. "It wasn't really for me, anyway, one of the trainers gave it to me when I moved in but it was always the older kids who used it more. I gave it to a different trainer who had kids back home, figured why not let someone actually use it." Marius nods, and Claudius narrows his eyes as another detail crystallizes. "I think … I autographed it? You know, like, keep it, it'll be worth something in five years. Talk about cocky."

This time Marius actually laughs, a burst of genuine amusement underneath the layer of tired, and yeah, Claudius remembers that too, the way he holds it in for a second before letting it out like he can't help it. "Hey, not cocky if it's true, right? Too bad she couldn't sell it without admitting where she got it."

But Claudius is already off chasing another memory. "You gave me something when you gave the pillow back. A switchblade?"

Marius' mouth twitches. "Butterfly knife. You'd just started learning the tricks."

"That's right." He'd cut up his hands something fierce trying to get the flips right, since the knives in Residential proper didn't come with a safe edge, and had to scramble for an excuse that the trainers would believe. They probably hadn't, but he'd at least passed the minimum credibility threshold because no one came to take it away. "One of the others gave me throwing knives."

"That was Gavin," Marius says, surprising him. "He liked you a lot. Said you reminded him of his brother back home."

"Oh." Now it's Claudius' turn to blink. "I kept all the knives and stuff everyone gave me when I moved into Residential proper, you know. I didn't want them confiscated so I stole some tape from the supply closet and stuck 'em all to my body. In retrospect they probably knew exactly what I was doing, but they always did give points for creativity."

"You were a smart kid," Marius says, and his shoulders sit a little less heavy now. "They probably would've been disappointed if you hadn't."

They trade a few more memories back and forth, testing to see which ones match, and sure enough they find more: like the time Claudius convinced the cooks to give him an extra jam tart for his eleventh birthday and he traded it for a wicked dagger, or the first girl Marius ever eyed as a dumb teenage boy, and how he knew he couldn't flirt with her so he tried to get her attention by having Claudius hit her with a homemade blow gun from across the room. After a while the air clears a little, and it it hits Claudius that for all they've worked together and Claudius has fought side by side with Marius' kids, they've never really talked. It's no wonder their history didn't come up.

Finally Marius' chuckles even out, and he gives Claudius a sidelong glance that means he's about to ask why he's really here. Except the stupid thing is he doesn't have a reason, there's no ulterior motive, no grand master plan except that everything is upside-down and strange and kind of awful, and it's actually nice to find someone with a connection that goes past his file or his televised interviews and the terrible truths that keep vomiting out of the trial testimonies.

Before Marius can say anything, Claudius takes a leap off the platform. "Hey, do you want to fight or something? I mean, hanging with you and your friends, that was kind of the best time in the Centre for me. I felt like I didn't have to work so hard to fit in. And now everything's gone to shit, we've lost so many Victors and your people took all those hits, and the trials are a complete shitshow, and —" He waves a hand. "It just feels like everybody's dead, and if they're not they're doing a damn good impression of it."

He's babbling. This is why he should only talk to Lyme; she understands his tics and fills his silences. "I just thought, you're not dead and I'm not dead, so maybe we could … be not dead together for a while?"

Marius pauses, and the silence extends with that particular flavour of politeness that means he probably isn't considering whether he's up for sparring with a Victor, and Claudius has missed a step. But then Marius' eyebrows start creeping up his head until he finally says, "Uh, I'm flattered, but —"

"Snow on a _shitpile_!" Claudius bursts out, the wave of horror smacking him full in the chest. "I'm not _hitting_ on you!"

For the first time in their entire acquaintance, Marius actually bursts into a full-on belly laugh. Claudius' face flames hot but Marius keeps on laughing, and clearly Claudius is meant to die alone with no friends ever because this is _not fair_. Finally Marius manages to calm himself enough to speak, though tiny giggles escape at the edges of his words. "Okay, sorry, but I knew you when you were ten, do you know how weird —"

"If I was hitting on you," Claudius says acidly, "which might I remind you I am not, I wouldn't use 'everyone is dead, let's go celebrate being alive' as my line. I may as well have come to you the night before the final assault and tried 'last chance before we die'." Marius sputters into his hand, and Claudius leans over, yanks the pillow out from behind his back, and hits him over the head with it, commanding officer be damned. "You really think I could get away with weak-ass game like that?"

"Well, you are a Victor," Marius says with a sharp grin, and ha, there's the ex-Career who's been hiding behind the responsible soldier, all wolf smiles and taking enjoyment in someone else's suffering. "I thought all you'd have to do is flash your wrist."

Claudius flattens his eyes. "Apparently not."

"Okay, okay." Marius holds out his hands in surrender, but since he's still holding back guffaws, it doesn't really help. Apparently Selene was right about the Scouts and the lack of Victor mystique. "I'm sorry I thought you were trying to seduce me with a cheesy line, instead of using the cheesy line to try to fight me."

"I have this problem a lot when trying to spar with people," Claudius says, resigned and exasperated. "Enobaria thought I wanted to sleep with her too."

That just sets Marius off on another fit, his laughter tinged with hysteria and exhaustion, and even as Claudius resists the urge to fold his arms and sulk like a ten-year-old, he can't help thinking this is probably good release, somehow. Too bad he can't get community service points for this, racking up hours of personal humiliation as civic duty.

Finally Marius winds down, wiping his eyes with his broad thumbs. "Oh man," he wheezes out, catching his breath. "Okay, c'mon you, let's fight."

The first thing Claudius does once they find a space and ditch their boots is cheat, taking a cheap shot before Marius has his stance settled to get him flat on his back. "Oh, yeah, I'm feeling the nostalgia now," he says, grinning, then scrambles back before Marius can throw him off and flip them over. Marius is big the way Brutus would've been if he'd stopped before the juicing stage, and Claudius does not intend to get his nose ground into the floor, thanks.

"Cheater," Marius says lazily, climbing to his feet and shaking out his limbs. "Come back and take a hit, if that Village hasn't made you soft."

"You have to land a hit before I can take one," Claudius shoots back.

Taunting during sparring is as familiar as muscle memory when swinging a sword, but it's been a long time. Mentor sparring with Lyme is a whole other ballgame, and helping Selene overcome her war-induced mental breaks isn't exactly conducive to trash-talking. It takes him a second to find his rhythm, pushing past the overt aggression and rage-inducing provocation from his pre-Arena training days, but once he hits it, Claudius finds himself nearly overwhelmed relief. He hadn't realized how having to tiptoe around the other Victors and their imploding grief, having to censor everything and avoid a minefield of triggers, had started to wear on him.

When Marius lungs in, snakelike and startlingly quick for a guy his size, and traps Claudius in a headlock like they're twelve, he can't help but wonder if Paylor's new commander doesn't feel the same.

It's a good fight, too, competitive without the razor's edge of nasty desperation that leached into every match in the final year of the Program, not love-tapping but not trying to break bones, either. It's nice, satisfying in a way Claudius has been missing, but just like Marius' laugh or the haunted look in his eyes it takes Claudius a second to catch hold of what it is. Not until Marius finally gets him to the ground, and Claudius flops back against the floor with a faint flicker of disappointment only for Marius to shoot him an odd look.

"You want me to believe that's it?" he says, disbelieving. "If you're waiting to stick me with a hidden knife, I pass."

"Just trying to keep you off your guard," Claudius says, scrambling to his feet, and now it clicks.

It's the first time in eight years that Claudius has gone into a fight without knowing exactly which one of them is meant to win, as designated by the Village and its social hierarchy. Artemisia might beat Brutus at sword-fighting every time, but afterward he always flips her on her ass to remind her where she stands — and because she'd be unbalanced and unsettled if he didn't. Claudius sparred with Lyme every single day of his life in the Village, and even after she stopped pinning him down to make a point, he still took comfort in knowing the match would end with him on his back and Lyme helping him to his feet.

He and Marius have no set script, no predetermined winner or loser. For a while now Claudius has been wondering whether he be addressing Marius with more deference, calling him 'sir' or saluting as though he actually was one of his soldiers, since Marius is the one with real military experience while Claudius got vaulted ahead on celebrity. He'd never known how to bring it up during the war, and afterward there didn't seem to be a non-awkward time, but now as they fall back to collect their breath, staring at each other across the clear patch of floor, it seems the fight has finally answered that question. The Victor and the Peacekeeper commander cancel out, leaving two men four years apart and nothing else between them.

Unfortunately, thinking about how natural the sparring feels distracts Claudius from the actual mechanics of it, and Marius' elbow catches him full in the face and knocks him to the ground. "Ow," Claudius says distantly, and Marius kneels down to check his head. "Is this where we kiss?" Claudius asks, his vision blurring.

"You're a shit," Marius says. "You're the one explaining this to Lyme if you have a concussion."

Claudius shakes off his dizziness and waves away Marius' hand as he stands. "I'm fine, I'm fine. Thanks for this, though, really. It's nice not to have to be so — careful."

"Yeah, I know the feeling," Marius says, shifting his weight to test a sore spot on his knee. "This was good, though. And I know you feel like everyone gave you shit for how your year went down, but for what it's worth, it was nice to see a kid make good, especially after so many Twos died messy in the years before you. I didn't go around telling people because I didn't want to be that guy, you know, kissing up to the Victor to look important, but I met up with Gavin and a couple of the others after you won, and we had a drink and all agreed we were proud to know you."

"Okay, well." Claudius wobbles a little, and Marius makes a 'tch' sound and steadies him before he catches himself. "I don't know how to deal with that, so I'm going to go. You should get some sleep." He turns, points a finger, hears Selene laughing at him for the Brutus mannerism but it's too late now. "Also maybe eat a fuckin' vegetable. You can't fix the world if you die of scurvy."

"Go fuck yourself," Marius says, shocking Claudius every bit as much as One Male's sword slicing through his shoulder and hitting bone. "But seriously, I'm sending someone to walk you home because you look a little green."

* * *

By the time Claudius makes it back to the barracks the last of the dizziness has faded, and even the pain from where his skull cracked against the floor is gone. He apologizes to his escort, who waves him off with a polite blandishment about the night air, and walks in to find Lyme waiting for him in the common area. "Holy shit," Claudius mutters, and he doesn't jump out of his skin thanks to half a lifetime of hyper-vigilance, but _holy shit_. "Sorry, am I in trouble?"

"I don't know, are you?" Lyme says, incredulous. "What did you do to your face, try to make out with a truck?"

"Yeah, that's exactly what I did," Claudius retorts. "Nah, Mom, be proud of me, I made a friend. I went to see Marius and we sparred for a bit. Clearly I'm a little rusty."

Lyme snerks a little, and she calls him over and makes a show of fussing over him while Claudius relaxes against her. "I'm glad you're making friends," she says. "I'm sorry I can't be there for you all the time."

"Eh," he says, a little surprised at how little it bothers him. "We did just have a war. We're all busy."

Lyme's fingers brush his hairline as she checks his head for injury, and Claudius' gaze snags on the cuff she wears around her wrist. "Hey, now that things are — well not _over,_ but — do you think you'd want it back? We're not with Thirteen anymore, and now with everyone back together —"

"You're not the first person to ask me that. Brutus and Nero both asked me within the first few days of everyone getting rescued." Lyme drops her arm, looking down at her wrist for several long seconds, then she sighs and removes the cuff. She pokes at the scar from the excised tattoo on her wrist, the raised edges faded a little but still visible even after all those months. "And — no, I don't think so. It wouldn't be the same, and I don't like moving backwards. I had it, now it's gone, and that's that."

Claudius grits his teeth. "They shouldn't have taken it. I shouldn't have let them."

"What were you going to do, fist-fight Coin right there in the hallway?" Lyme says, amused. "It was my choice, not yours. I was a different person when I got it, in a different place, and I'll never go back to being that person again. It would be like trying to redo a wedding, or something."

"Except you hate weddings."

"Except I hate weddings," Lyme agrees. She never talked about it with Claudius but he knows from Village whispers that she hated her tattoo for what it represented, all the parts of her she tried to scrub away and lock in a box and make up for by grabbing kids like Claudius and pulling them out of the muck. Except for all that, it marked her as a member of the Victor family — a family that's a whole lot smaller than it was before.

Claudius thinks about the fight with Marius, about not having to deal with Victor bullshit for once, about the other Victors on television and the sacrifices they're making all over again even though everyone in the whole fucking country knows they're going to convict Snow so this whole thing is nothing but horror-show pageantry. He looks down at his own wrist, at the swirl of black and the dots of orange, red, silver and gold, and remembers the heartsick relief that filled his chest when he woke up in the hospital and looked down to see it, real and raw against his skin.

"I'll get rid of mine," Claudius says, even as something inside him breaks, like a cello string tuned so tight it snaps and slices skin. "You shouldn't be the only one of us without one."

He doesn't tell her he'd rather peel off his fingernails or pull out all his teeth one by one. He doesn't tell her that as soon as he'd been old enough to notice all the Two Victors had a similar pattern inked around their wrists he'd stolen markers from his classroom to draw his own version on his skin at night, and washing it off before getting ready for school in the morning used to make him cry.

He doesn't tell her, but it doesn't matter anyway. "No," Lyme says, quiet but firm. She takes his arm by the wrist and presses her fingers to the ink beneath his skin, her thumb steady against his pulse point. "Thank you for offering, but no. You keep yours."

He struggles not to sigh in relief, and it comes out as an awkward sputter instead. "I would," Claudius insists, but it's hard not to feel like he just surfaced after staying underwater until his vision blacked. "I don't care about the tattoo — I mean, I do — but I care about you more."

Lyme smiles at him, rueful. "I know. But it was weird enough for me, and I never felt connected to mine in the first place. I don't think you need to go through that."

"It still sucks," Claudius says, emphatic, and hating that he sounds like a sulky teenager, but you know what, sometimes after war and fire and slow, lingering death hooked up to half a dozen machines, the only thing left is _this sucks_. "And… I don't know, we went through everything together, it feels weird not doing this."

Lyme clicks her tongue. "D, no, listen to me. Keep it. I like knowing not everything has changed."

"Yeah, fine," Claudius says, knocking his head against her shoulder. "What if I make you a friendship bracelet, then? You should have something."

It's a joke but not really, and he hears every second in the beat of his pulse until Lyme laughs and combs her fingers through his hair. "You know what, if you make me one I'll wear it. I'll even make you a matching one if you want to."

"I would fucking love that," Claudius says without a hint of irony. "Next time I'm out I'll steal some thread from some stupid floofy craft store. Sorry, 'commandeer for the good of the reconstruction effort'."

"You better at least fix a window," Lyme says, poking him between the eyes. "No looting, even the small stuff. But now we should go to bed."

"Hey, look at you, all grown up and sticking to a sleep schedule," Claudius says. Lyme makes a face and complains about kids these days and their sass, but once they're up she pulls him in for a quick hug and drops a kiss on the top of his head.

* * *

The next morning, the television broadcast announces both Coriolanus Snow and Alma Coin guilty of all charges, and that both are officially stripped of any rights to leadership forever. In celebration, in solidarity, and to mark the beginning of a new era, every citizen no longer eligible for the Reaping as of the Quarter Quell will be invited to vote for their choice of candidate for the leader of free Panem reborn.

"Oh boy," Claudius says out loud, and drops his spoon into the bowl of terrible commissary oatmeal.


	15. Chapter 15

Marius never asked to be a kingmaker.

All the Peacekeepers know the story of how Ronan founded the modern order by making promises to new president Coriolanus Snow, securing their position now and for the future both as protector and protected. Not only for the Peacekeepers but for District 2, since for the Peacekeeping Academy to exist the district needed a steady supply of trained, well-fed, loyal children willing to enter its ranks. By providing President Snow with legitimacy, Ronan had guaranteed District 2 as much privilege and support as the Capitol would ever give.

Of course, Coriolanus Snow was a tyrant, and that privilege came at the expense of every other district and the innocence and lives of their children, but Ronan read the equations laid out in front of him and made the choice to save his own. Now, with two presidents imprisoned and an unknown on the horizon, Marius sees the future like the rising sun, less a beautiful and awe-inspiring symbol of possibility than it is blinding with a looming sense of inescapability.

Panem has never known a national election. There have been calls in the past now and then from idealistic Capitol politicians, and Coriolanus always let them get to a certain point to see who supported the idea — and the candidates who would run against him — before the Scouts would quietly move in and remove the opposition and let the election die a quiet, anticlimactic death. Tragic accidents for the most visible, black-bag disappearances for the rest, nothing to make a huge scandal, but enough that no one tried more than once per generation at most. Marius missed the last one, but it had been recent enough that the incident was part of his induction training.

In the aftermath of war, the idea of nominations and candidates and campaigning is absolutely ludicrous. Marius imagines campaign promises in a world where the people skirt starvation and exposure, when the former rebels work miracles every day to get supplies out to the frozen outer districts — when grassroots efforts and community organizers and sheer tenacity are the only things keeping the country together, not saviours on television issuing heroic decrees — and almost laughs. The people want food and supplies, not more pretty speeches.

"I've heard people say they'd vote for either you or Lyme," Claudius says one evening over a beer. He gives Marius a speculative look that's mostly teasing but with a glint of something sharper underneath, and Marius lets out a huff of breath through clenched teeth. "And not just Peacekeepers, either. You both overcame your district to do the right thing, or whatever it is they're saying. It shows something about your character, apparently."

"At least it would never make majority," Marius says, frowning down at his beer. This is the last thing he needs right now. "Too much inter-district animosity, even now. People are worried the inner districts will somehow claw back the old favour under the new government because nobody from One or Two has been dragged out and shot for crimes against humanity."

Neither of them mentions Rigel, but Marius feels his ghost in the room anyway. Not that Rigel would come within ten miles of a presidency, but he's always had more ambition and call to leadership than Marius, and he has the charisma and force of personality to work through impossible situations like this. If anyone from Two could have navigated postwar politics, it would have been his partner.

"Whoever it is, we need to make sure that's not their plan." Claudius' face is grim, grey eyes solemn. "We got District 2 into the rebellion to the extent we did by promising they'd be safe. If the new president decides to make an example of the Career districts and, I don't know, declare need to pay reparations or something, then what? Once it starts it won't ever be enough. You know how bloodlust is."

He does. Marius has heard the rumours of Coin's plans for one final Hunger Games using Capitol children, felt the chill knowing that the original Games were also meant to be a one-time example using rebel children before the Capitol decided they liked the idea too much to stop at one. He knows that one drop of blood in the water brings the mutts churning to the surface, and any talk of payback from one district to another will open up a yawning chasm that nothing will ever fill. Already the talk of what to do with the Peacekeepers — those who rebelled, those who abstained, those who actively fought for Snow — has taken on a vicious, curdling edge.

The next day he finds Commander Paylor at her desk in rebel headquarters, running over the latest reports. She raises one eyebrow at his unannounced entrance but invites him to sit, and she pushes her papers aside and folds her hands in front of her, the very picture of perfect attention.

"What would you do with Two if you won?" Marius asks. He doesn't bother to make it pretty. Rigel always had the way with words while Marius acted as his backup, stoic and intimidating, the muscle behind the charm.

Paylor leans back in her chair, studying him with a commander's focus. Even behind a desk it's impossible to forget that she spent the war on the front lines, stealing weapons from dead Peacekeepers and making bombs from pilfered factory materials, inspiring her bleeding comrades with her own fearlessness more than the speeches. "You mean the reparations?" she says. Her mouth quirks when Marius shifts. "I've heard the talk, and I don't see any point to it. Your children died. Your workers lived in poverty. Arguing about whose suffering has more value is pointless. If we indulge in revenge and retaliation, it won't be long until we descend right back into the same barbarism and spectacle that we fought the Capitol for. The people can be led to see that."

Marius nods, but the tension in his chest stays taut. "What about the Peacekeepers?"

This time she hesitates. "Any new government will need support, but I think we can all agree that it's time for the Peacekeepers to end. The regime is a symbol of the Capitol and its cruelty, and the name has been twisted into a mockery of itself. I think if we were to start listing specific abuses at each other, you could come up with a longer one than I can." Marius inclines his head, acknowledging the point, and Paylor continues. "Any new peace force would have to come from the people, not from an elite cadre, and from all over the country. For now we don't have the resources, so we'd have to take what we can get, which means rebel soldiers and volunteers until we got some kind of training system set up." She lifts both eyebrows. "One where teenagers committing murder isn't a prerequisite for entry."

"That's in the future," Marius says, ignoring the jab. He can't say it's not deserved, though he does want to find out who's been talking about the Program with non-Twos and give them a good shake. Right now is not the time to be spilling those secrets, not with things so volatile. "Right now you need people who are trained and willing to help. There are people who could join right now. People who would follow. Not just those of you who fought with you. A lot of Peacekeepers would join if they thought they could make the world a better place, for their district and for everywhere. It's what they thought they were signing up for in the first place, only this time a new leader has the chance to keep that promise."

Paylor studies him, tapping one finger on the stack of papers. "For those of you who turned and fought against the Capitol, it would be easy," she says. "You've already proven yourselves. The rest of them … that's more complicated. People would say they're only being opportunistic, following the winner."

"If you think that's true you don't know the district very well," Marius says, his heart clenching with a mixture of pride and exasperation. "If you — a new government — offered Peacekeepers the option of a return to duties, there would be plenty of people happy to wash their hands of the whole thing and go home. Not — act against you," he adds quickly. "Nobody's going to form a militia and try to overthrow anyone. We're practical more than anything else, and the war is over. But no one is going to join up if they don't believe in it. Give them hope, a chance to fight for a world where District 2 has a place the same as everyone else, and they will."

"And those who say no?" Paylor asks, her head tilted slightly, calculating.

"Then they don't join," Marius says, spreading his hands. "Early retirement, discharge, whatever you want to call it. Officially disband the Peacekeeping forces, and everyone who wants to stay on has to re-enlist. Either they do or they don't, end of story."

"What about those actively fought against the rebellion?" Paylor presses, eyes hard. "There was that militia in District 2, to name one. If someone fought and killed our people, and refuse any sort of official pardon, what choice are they leaving a new government?"

The chill runs down Marius' spine. He thinks of Commander and Sergeant Seward behind the barricade, steely-eyed and uncompromising until the combined weight of their estranged son and the victor who'd carried their dead boy's body back to them wore them down to the stand-down position. They would accept no pardon, no re-enlistment, that much he knows.

"That's not the question," Marius says, heart racing in his chest. He wishes for Rigel, for Brin, for their passion and unwavering force of personality. "District 2 followed the rebellion because we gave them hope. They will follow a new government for the same reason. But if we start by making public examples of the few who stood up for their beliefs, however violently, all that will disappear. The rest of the country will call for more blood, just like you said, and you'll lose the good will of Two forever. You can't reach out with a fist and an open hand at the same time."

"I see your point," Paylor says, careful and cautious. "But you forget, we haven't had the election yet. I'm not the president."

Marius takes a deep breath. He presses his hands flat against his knees, wishing he could draw strength from the mountain air or anything but this ridiculous city and its shattered artifice, but too late now. "Promise me the Peacekeepers, and I can give you District 2. The rest is up to Panem."

Paylor sucked air through her teeth. "This is an election, Marius, not a new dictatorship."

"It's an open-ballot election, which means people will vote for who they know," Marius counters. "Who in District 2 has paid attention to any rebel leaders except for Lyme? Everyone and their mothers will be voting for her. And they could, and she might win it and hand it over to you in protest, but that's not how you want to start. If you guarantee that the Peacekeepers will be safe, and District 2 has the chance to start over, I'll make sure that everyone in Two knows your name. That you're a good person with their best interests at heart."

A pause. Marius watches her, sees the wheels turning as he holds his breath, and finally Paylor stands. "You have my word," she says. She extends her hand, and Marius shakes it, feels the strength in her grip. "You're doing good work out there, Marius. I'm glad to find out I won't be running against you."

"Are you kidding me?" Marius snorts. "Politics is a nightmare, you couldn't pay me enough. You have fun, though."

She laughs, her smile bright and genuine for the first time in Marius' recent memory. "Thank you for that," Paylor says. "I somehow doubt that, but I'll do my best."

* * *

Selene doesn't pay much attention to the election. She votes for Paylor like the rest of them, both to keep Marius happy and because even without much faith in the democratic process, Selene has too much enlightened self-interest to ignore it completely. Thankfully they don't pull her in for the logistics, which means she can cast her vote and go back to doing her job.

"You're not even a little bit excited?" Dash asks one night after they finish a double shift, cleaning and checking their weapons on the roof to wind down before bed. "I don't know, first national election where we haven't had to go secretly murder everyone at the end. That's a big deal."

"It's politics." Selene shrugs, scrubbing the inside of her rifle barrel with practiced efficiency. Still, she can't remember the last time Dash initiated any kind of casual conversation since before losing Rigel, and she's not going to shoot him down. "Less murder, sure, but still the same old bullshit. You really think if everybody voted for Claudius that he's the name they'd announce?"

Dash lets out a quiet noise of protest. "Okay, no offence to D, but why would they vote for him?"

"Point of argument." Selene waves a hand. "Say Two votes for him because his loyalty inspired them. Say our rebels do because of his leadership in battle and part in overthrowing Coin. And say all that bullshit with the shitty leaders spooks everyone so they decide to vote for someone who no political aspirations, you know, the whole thing about only the people with no interest in gaining power are the ones who deserve to have it."

A slow look of wonder creeps over Dash's face. "You really are a master of bullshit spinning, you know that."

In the old days Selene would have grinned and punched him, but with the grey cloak of his grief still settled uneasily over him their old dynamic feels too sharp. Still, he's trying, and her original point about the likelihood of electoral meddling and hypothetical vote tampering doesn't seem that important. "Give me another one," Selene says instead. "See if you can stump me."

Dash leans back on his hands, looking thoughtful, then his eyes glint in a flicker of his old mischief. "How about Enobaria? And you can't say because she killed everyone else. Remember, this is a democracy."

"Starting strong, I see," Selene says, throwing a cleaning cloth at his head. "Okay, how's this …"

When the voting closes and Paylor makes the announcement of her election, Selene isn't surprised. Paylor was a sure thing, really, competent and strong and a woman of the people, and so far missing the streak of cruelty and power-hungry sadism that her presidential predecessors carried. Marius did a smart thing by making Paylor doubt her victory and getting her to make the promise beforehand, negotiating before she could come at them from a place of strength. Selene isn't one for politics, but she does have a long history of knowing how to work a situation to get what she wants. She still can't tell whether Marius did it on purpose, but credit to him all the same.

Along with Paylor as the new president come several more appointments to her cabinet that Selene doesn't bother to pay attention to, since she's no longer a Scout with massive intelligence files to memorize. The announcement of a new council of advisors made up of elected members from each district causes a stir, and Selene amuses herself for a while imagining District 2 electing Joseph Seward to represent their interests.

It's all very premature, given how much of Selene's job is scrambling around trying to keep everyone in the country from freezing or starving or rioting, and she can't shake the feeling that this is all a different kind of smokescreen: promises of democracy and due process instead of wedding dresses and ridiculously frosted cakes. Selene is not opposed to cynicism, but no matter what her parents might have thought, she didn't make it all the way through the Program because she wanted to break bones without getting in trouble, and she's not still here because she expects an amazing payout as soon as Paylor officially reinstates whatever she's calling the new Peacekeepers.

Selene tracks down Marius in his office, not that it's hard. For all they used to tease Emin, trading honest action for desk duty when she took over management of the Scouts division, Marius hasn't seen active deployment since the final assault, and he probably won't again. Selene wonders if he misses the field or if it wouldn't be the same without Rigel and everyone else, but she definitely isn't going to ask him. Don't ask any questions unless you know the answers and are pretty sure you'd be happy with them — except, of course, that's exactly what she's doing now.

He looks up and smiles when she enters, which makes Selene feel a little better. It means he probably isn't spending all his time on her worrying, so she must have a handle on herself compared to those ugly, messy weeks in the middle of the war. So hey, that's something. "Selene," Marius says. "What can I do for you?"

She probably should have thought more about it before coming in here, but endless introspection has never been Selene's style. She pulls up a chair, restrains the impulse to put her feet up on the desk just to distract from her swirling thoughts, and balances one foot on the seat of her chair instead. "Remember when I asked you why we're here? Why you joined the rebels, why we didn't just deliver Brutus and run?" Marius nods. "We got in way over our head, did things we never thought we'd have to do." Killed friends they never thought they'd face, those first few days, even if it became clear pretty quick what turning traitor would cost them. "Do you still think it was worth it?"

Marius exhales once, and Selene knows she slapped him in the face even if she didn't want to. Was all this worth losing Rigel, losing Brin, was it worth shooting Troy in the face, was it worth the grenade flung into a team of his old squadmates, the casualty list that's three times as long as the handful of survivors. "Rigel and I asked ourselves that when we first brought you into this," Marius says. "We wanted to make sure that whatever happened, the world would be a better place for you and Dash at the end of all this. I think it's the question everyone will be asking, not just rebels but civilians too."

Selene finds a stray thread and twists it around her finger. "And?"

"I don't know," Marius says simply. Anyone else Selene would narrow her eyes at the obvious attempt to dodge giving a real answer, but Marius leans back in his chair and regards her with all seriousness. A memory stirs, someone — her father? — sitting her down, giving her a very similar kind of look, as he told her something very important, something that had not necessarily been the usual thing for a little girl to talk about, and Selene half-remembers stopping to pay attention not because she cared about the topic but because it mattered so much that he treated her like a grownup.

"I'd be wary of anyone at this point who said it's all worth it because we won, I think," Marius says. "We did what we had to do and now it's done, there's no point in torturing ourselves, but that doesn't mean we get to be complacent. It's hard to say when it's worth it because when is it over? When do we get to stop and say _now_ the work is really done? I think … I think it's more important for us to keep trying to make the world better. Rather than ask whether everything we did was worth it, the question is what we can do now to make it so. Because there always will be one thing we can do today."

That does sound better than shooting down runaways or supervising interrogation sessions while trusting that it's all part of the Capitol's larger plan to keep the country safe. "I can do that," Selene says, sitting up straight and squaring her shoulders. "So where do we start?"

Marius smiles again, bringing back a glimpse of her old XO even with the shadows under his eyes. "I'll have a better idea once the re-enlistment process gets going and I get the official numbers. Which, by the way, I know I've been talking a lot about 'we' —"

Selene blinks at him. It takes her a good five seconds before she clues in to what he's talking about at all, and when she does she has to try very hard not to snort openly at her boss. "Obviously I'm re-enlisting," she says. "I'm not going to leave you here to get eaten alive by paperwork all by yourself. Someone has to come by and tell you about all the fun fieldwork you're missing."

"I look forward to it," Marius says, his voice doing that thing where she can't tell if he's teasing her or not. According to Claudius, who's started having drinks with him a few times a week, he's capable of blistering sarcasm when he wants to, but he doesn't show that to his junior officers very often. "Tell me something, did you ever talk to Petra after everything that happened?"

"No," Selene says. Marius raises an eyebrow, which means she probably said that too quickly, but it's not a lie or an evasion, it just — well, it just _is_. "No, it's too weird now. We fought and then Odin died and now all those other people are dead, and now I'm friends with Claudius and she and Claudius don't get along, and I think it's better if we leave that door shut, that's all."

Marius nods, his expression sympathetic. "Fair enough. Shall we look over your next assignment, then?"

Selene nods, glad for something concrete after all this talk of feelings and greater good, even if she did initiate it, and Marius slides her a folder across his desk.

* * *

Brutus dreams of Emory. He dreams of her smile, small and shy and halfway hidden until she turns to face him and it's like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. He dreams of the way she used to hold herself like she was half her size instead of throwing her weight around, so people forgot she had the muscles of a killer in the body of a quarry worker. In his dreams she's whole and hale and laughing, and she and Devon wrestle on the grass while Petra cheers and throws pine cones at their heads, and Brutus sits with the sun on his face watching his kids together and alive and happy.

It lasts until he remembers it's a dream. And so each time he fights the realization as it creeps over him, but the clouds roll in and the skies go dark and Emory turns to him, her skin drawing back against her skull, the side of her head collapsing in on itself, her eyes wide and black and gaping —

— and then he wakes up and she's lying in a Capitol morgue.

The war is over, though as any good Victor knows, 'over' is a Games-damned lie. The Games don't end when the trumpet plays, when the curtain falls on the interview, when the crown rests heavy on your forehead and the president nods in approval. They're not over during those first six months of darkness and doubt. They're not over every year when the Capitol drags the mentors back to put them through it over and over again. Different Victors try to escape it in different ways, with booze or drugs or slips in their sanity or mentoring again and again until the names ran together and it no longer mattered because all of them were dead, but it always catches up in the end.

With the war, as far as Brutus can figure it, people split into two main camps. The rebel soldiers, like him, who focused on one mission at a time, _do this thing, then this_ , never looking too far ahead because the whole thing felt too overwhelming and impossible otherwise, and the civilians, who couldn't do much to save themselves except put their hopes on the far future and and wait. Whichever side people fell on, the capture of President Snow marked a stopping point where things were supposed to get better, mark some kind of upswing that would make the horror of the past year with its whippings and executions and bombings worth it.

And now they're here, and the world didn't suddenly transform into a magical land of plenty and the roads and factories and railroads didn't fix themselves overnight, and the winter didn't decide to give everyone a break this year because they all went through a hard time. For the first time the yearly Games video and its voiceover that even the most devout Centre kids tuned out during feels apt: _war, terrible war_. Panem's people sacrificed twenty-four kids each year to keep this from happening, and if the rebels don't work fast, Brutus isn't sure that some won't start doing the math and wondering whether that wasn't worth the cost.

The rebellion wasn't just about the Hunger Games; it was about the enforced poverty and starvation, about whippings and secret murders and lies and poison, Peacekeepers beating people to death and districts without medical care and children dying in the streets, but the Games made good, easy anti-Capitol propaganda. If people are still hungry, still dying, still just as cold and miserable and poor after the war as they were before, Brutus can't help wondering how long it will take before the rumbles start.

Nothing to do about that but keep working, of course. Emory gave her life for this war, she jumped right in and didn't hesitate when Brutus would've thought she'd have as much hesitation about joining the rebels as Petra, and the fact she didn't means there's things about his girl that Brutus didn't know and now he never will. He gets good mileage out of feeling sorry for himself until the day Petra disappears and scares the shit out of him, when Lyme's words on the day they let Emory go finally return and bludgeon him upside the head like a sack of hammers: _you already have two — don't let them feel like they're not enough._

So, yeah, after that Brutus sucked it up and went down to rebel headquarters and got himself put on the work roster, because half Petra's problem is feeling unloved and the other is feeling helpless with the world, and if Brutus isn't even bothering to try to fix it then that must mean there's no point. He's gotta show her that both she and the country are worth it, and so no matter how much he feels like shit, no matter what ghosts dog his dreams, no matter how hopeless it all feels beyond his fingertips, Brutus picks up his feet and he heads in to the office to get his assignment and he comes back to tell Petra what he did today.

One day Marius shows up, brows furrowed, the sort of tension to his posture that makes Brutus wish he had his beer-stocked fridge from back home. He waves Marius to a chair, and Marius sits for a minute, staring down at his hands for a while before he finally lets out a breath and looks up. "I need your help. I didn't want to ask this, but I don't know what else to do. It's about Dash."

Brutus never talked too much with the boy, though he seemed like a nice enough kid, friendly and honest with the kind of face that meant he either couldn't lie to save his life or was a secret master at it. When Brutus caught the kids playing the mentor game once Claudius pegged him as a Devon's boy, and Brutus wouldn't argue. He hasn't done any missions with the kids since the assault on the mansion, as they've been running all over the place doing Snow knows what, with Claudius the only Victor who ever accompanies them.

He starts to ask what's wrong, but luckily his brain catches up to him a second later. If he's still dreaming of Emory, it's sure odds that a kid only a handful of years into his Peacekeeping career would be shaken by watching his commanding officer get shot in the throat right in front of him. And it's not like they've had time for therapy and proper detox when they had to go right back out into the city with Rigel's body still lying there in the garden.

"Selene has handled things a lot better than I thought," Marius says. "A lot of it is Claudius, but I think a lot of it is just, this is what works for her, keeping busy and dealing with things a little at a time. Dash is … he's not Lene. He can't go take a crossbow and shoot at things and come back and feel better."

"He's not Two," Brutus says. Marius frowns, defensive of his boy already, and Brutus holds up a hand. "Not like that. I just mean, Mags always said you had to deal with grief before you could turn it into something positive. She never would've worked herself into the ground trying to avoid something that hurt. The mountains endure, but the sea moves on."

"I guess," Marius says, lifting one shoulder and letting it fall. "All I know is, it keeps building and I keep waiting for it to crack, but he's not. I don't know what to do. Selene and Claudius are good for him, but it's not good enough. He's slipping away. I thought maybe you'd have better luck."

Brutus knows damn well what it feels like to try to outwork the grief. Here he let it catch him, surround him and swallow him until he stank of it, but back when he lost tributes every few years he used to spend weeks burying himself in work to try to escape the demons until finally Odin or Lyme would drag his head above water whether he wanted to or not. He might not know Dash but he does know heartbreak, and maybe he doesn't have to be the kid's mentor to find common ground in shared sorrow.

He thinks of Mags and her quiet strength, Finnick Odair and his collapses into silence, the crash of a storm surge against rock. "He's gotta break," Brutus says.

Marius grimaces. "I'm worried if he does he's going to fall apart. It's not that I need him to keep working, we have people who can do the job, but —"

"I can get him back out the other side," Brutus says. A bold claim, for a kid who's not his, a boy he hasn't spent more than a few hovercraft rides with all told, but he's putting together the pattern now, making an imaginary mentor file as though picturing what Dash would need on the far side of a breakdown. That's all mentoring is, really, a bunch of hypotheticals that get tested real fast when you run head-first off a cliff. "Give me somewhere to let it happen and I'll bring him back."

"I don't know…"

"If he were fine, you wouldn't be here," Brutus points out, and Marius' cheek twitches. "And you wouldn't be here if you didn't care. But if he's afraid to break, and you're afraid to let him, there's half your problem right there."

Marius nods, reluctant. "He won't talk about it. I've tried, but he says he's fine, and he gives me this smile that just about breaks my heart. The only one who could get him to talk when he got like this is Rigel, but." He spreads his hands before letting them fall back into his lap.

Brutus falls silent, lets his mind run back. He wasn't real chummy with the Fours, leastways not about dead kids, not when theirs usually ended up killing each other more years than not and that made it an awkward topic. Mags told him once she used to let the grief carry her like a wave out to sea, but how is Dash supposed to do that out here in this stupid dead city full of disabled death traps? It would be like trying to recover from the Games without leaving the Arena.

The answer, when it hits him, is stupidly simple. "Water," Brutus says, and Marius looks up. "I'll take him to the water. Mags used to say that Fours draw strength from the sea, soaking it up from the roots. It's no Games-damned wonder he's dying out here. At least we get the mountains, even if they're not ours."

Marius clicks his teeth. "They'll never let him go to Four, not now. Half the trains are down, and Four's got its own cleanup going after those air raids —"

"Doesn't have to be the sea," Brutus says, thinking of the Victor memorial out by the lake, the strange calm that suffused him as he looked over the placid water, the mountains reflected in its blue, rippled surface. "I can take him out to one of those lakes nearby. Just enough to connect a little piece of himself back home."

"I can't believe I didn't think of that," Marius says. He looks at Brutus again, this time with a hint of new respect. It's a little funny coming from a kid younger than Devon, but he'll take it. "Then again, can't remember the last time I went to Four. Never went there for fun, anyway."

"Yeah, and Claudius was high as a fucking kite last time he was there," Brutus says. He's the only one of them who's actually been to Four more than once, the only one who went there as a social call. Maybe the only one of them who's ever seen the ocean up close. "Give me an afternoon with him, just let me know when."

Marius exhales. "You sure? I know this is asking a lot —"

Brutus waves him off. "Nah. He looks up to you, and you're his boss. He won't want to disappoint you by letting you see he's still sad after all this time. But I'm not his mentor, and he might respect me for politeness' sake but he won't actually care about my opinion. Easier for him to fall apart in front of me. Tell me when you can spare him and I'll see what I can do."

It's a few days before Marius can wrangle Dash's schedule without it looking too obvious, but not too long after Brutus heads over and finds the kids eating breakfast. Selene sits close to Dash, one hand on his back as she and Claudius bicker over who gets the last of the coffee. Dash watches them but doesn't join in, and he's eating his food but Brutus recognizes the dogged perseverance of someone who doesn't want to waste food when others are going hungry.

"Hey," Brutus says, dropping into a seat across the table. Selene blinks at him, startled, and Claudius looks thoughtful. "Dash, you're with me today. Marius cleared it already."

Dash frowns. "What are we doing?"

"Special assignment," Brutus says as Selene and Claudius exchange glances. "Don't worry about your gear or anything, we're not blowing things up."

"Where are we going?"

"Someplace."

"To do what?"

"Stuff," Brutus says, showing teeth. "Eat your breakfast and let's go."

Dash wrestles with the automatic protest, but Brutus doesn't give him anything else, letting him sit in his curiosity for a good minute. "All right," Dash says finally, and he scoops up the last of the food from his plate.

Claudius flicks his fingers in mentor-sign as Dash gets up to wash his dishes. _Everything okay?_

Brutus can't sign back without Selene noticing, and he doesn't think the Scouts know their code but he wouldn't put it past them to have figured it out. He nods instead, just once, and Claudius is a good kid and so he leaves it at that. Selene at least seems distracted enough by Dash, her eyes tracking him as he comes back to the table, hands in his pockets. "Good," Brutus says, clapping Dash lightly on the shoulder. "Let's head out. Don't worry, we'll be back before the end of the day."

Selene swallows, and her hand jerks like she wants to reach out and stop them, but Brutus catches her eye and shakes his head. Instantly Selene bristles, scowling, and Brutus thinks back to the trio of Centre files on his coffee table and the unpredictable, antagonistic girl he'd passed over instead of Petra. His instinctive approaches, tailor-made for Petra, are all wrong for Selene, and he never noticed when she was playing the quiet, polite soldier girl but she's dropped the act now. He didn't hear her choice for the mentor game but he'll bet his stipend it wasn't him.

"It's okay," Brutus says instead, opting for reassurance instead of authority. "I'll take good care of him."

Outside, Brutus requisitions a car, which means finding the first vehicle big enough to hold him that has the keys in the glove compartment. Dash raises his eyebrows but doesn't argue when Brutus says they'll bring it back, and they climb in and take off down the road along the route Brutus plotted out the day before. As the street turns into a road and the road into a highway, as the buildings thin out and trees spring up on either side while the mountains grow in front of them, Dash leans his head against the window and watches the scenery flash past.

It took Brutus the better part of a day poring over maps and quizzing a few of the Capitol Peacekeepers, but finally he found exactly what he wanted: a climate-controlled reservoir an hour's drive out of the city that's used as a year-round beach. It's not full Arena dome technology, so the temperature itself won't be shorts weather, but the ground and water are heated from below using some kind of geothermic technology that Brutus didn't bother trying to understand. It'll be chilly, and it won't have salt or shrieking gulls or the tang of fish and seaweed, but it's got sand and water they can stick their feet in, and that will have to do.

He doesn't bother talking while they drive, letting the purr of the engine lull Dash into a half-doze as he follows the map along the winding road. At last he stops the car, pulling over onto the gravel, and leans over to shake Dash awake. "We're here," he says, and gestures out the windshield.

It ain't Four, not with the mountains on the far side of the lake, the jagged peaks and wisps of cloud reflected on the water, but Dash's eyes go wide anyway. Brutus grins a little. "You didn't think Four owns all the water in Panem, did you?" he says. "Let's see what's down there."

He gets out of the car, glad to stretch his legs, and crosses over the gravel barrier onto the sand. It's definitely not Four sand, which is white and soft and silken underfoot, but a beach is a beach. After the confines of the city even Brutus feels the knots unwinding. "Well, c'mon, shoes off," Brutus says, reaching down to tug off his boots and socks.

Dash finds his voice. "Okay, I know you all like your macho competitions, but this is still winter —"

"Climate control," Brutus says. He sets one foot down into the sand, gives an experimental wiggle of his toes. A little cool, but the water will be warmer. He doesn't bother rolling up his jeans, just strides out into the lake and lets the waves slap at his calves. Brutus stops when it's up to his knees, and he digs his toes into the loose, wet sand underfoot and stands there as some underwater plant curls around his ankle. The splashing behind him tells him Dash has joined him, and finally the boy stands next to Brutus, eyes closed and face tilted up toward the sun.

Grief is a funny thing, especially for someone trying so hard to be strong. The first few times Brutus lost a tribute he'd tried so hard to hold it back, to prove he was good and right and strong, that he valued sacrifice more than his own pain and didn't mourn any more than was proper. Each time something jarred him out of it, but it hadn't been the caskets, or their gravestones, or the nightmares or carving their names on the wall of sacrifice or anything that made sense.

In the end, it was always a simple kindness that undid him. Odin's hand on his back. Lyme's arm around his shoulder. Hera stopping by with a plate of food and letting her fingers brush his arm.

Brutus reaches over, slowly, and lets his hand rest on the back of Dash's head, warm and solid and unmoving. In his head he starts a count of five, then lets his thumb brush the side of his neck.

Dash's breath twists in his chest and comes out in a hard gasp, and the first of the tears start down his face. He fights it, of course he does, because everyone Brutus knows from Four might make fun of him and other Twos for their 'punches, not feelings' attitude but that doesn't mean he's down for crying in front of someone he barely talks to. But Brutus stares out over the lake, keeping his gaze firmly fixed on the mountains, and lets his hand rub a soothing rhythm at the base of Dash's skull. After less than a minute of choking it back. Dash finally drops his head and cries for real.

It's almost silent, nothing but the occasional hitch of breath to give him away. Finally Dash sucks in air through his mouth, wet and messy, and he presses his thumb and forefinger to his eyelids. Brutus tightens his hand on his neck, willing strength to flow through the contact, and Dash clenches his fists. "He was a good man," he says.

"Yeah," Brutus says. He didn't know Rigel for long, but it didn't take much to figure that out. He loved his country and its people enough to turn traitor and fight his friends for it, and he never forgot or tried to wash away the things he did on the other side. Brutus shifts, lets his arm rest across Dash's shoulders and slides his hand up to the back of the kid's head, running his fingers through his hair.

"He was," Dash repeats, a little helplessly. Brutus knows the feeling, the desperate need to boil a person down to the essentials so someone else can understand.

"He was to me, that's for sure," Brutus says, and Dash's shoulders sag a little. But the contrast between the water and the bracing breeze has started to get to him, and he gives Dash a little nudge. "Here, let's sit. Water's nicer than the air out here."

He walks them back a bit toward the shore, then lowers himself down into the water, clothes and all. Dash sinks down and actually flops backward, sending small waves rippling in all directions. Brutus lets him be, leaning back to watch the clouds drift across the sharp blue sky. A small flock of crows breaks free of the ring of pine trees, squawking up and away.

Emory loved the water. She grew up near one, and her first full summer out when he worried he wouldn't be able to stop her watching the Games, Brutus took her out to lake country for the whole summer. He got them a cabin and they'd gone out to the water every day, Brutus sitting on the dock and Emory cutting through the water like a fish, laughing and swimming back to catch Brutus by the ankles and do her best to pull him in after her. They went back every year they didn't have kids in the ring.

"I didn't think any of us would die," Dash says, his voice floating up toward the sky. "I knew people would, I just thought — other people. I know that's stupid, and selfish."

"Not stupid," Brutus says. "And if it's selfish, so are all of us. It's why war's so shitty."

If someone had to die in the war, Brutus assumed it would be him. Ever since he walked into two Arenas and came out the other side still breathing, all Brutus heard every time he suited up was the ticking of the countdown clock. It was never supposed to be Emory. Odin's death aches, but the mentor is supposed to die to protect the younger ones, that's the natural order of things. Brutus should have kept her safe somehow. Should've found a way to tear her from death's grasp and pull her back into his arms.

Rigel would rather be alive than dead, of course, but if he had to choose, Brutus can guarantee he'd rather Dash be standing here than him. He also knows way better than to say it.

"I really miss him," Dash says, his voice trailing up in hurt confusion. "I miss him so much, I —" He stops, wipes at his face. "We can go back if you want."

Oh no they don't. "I'm communing with nature," Brutus says mildly. "We've got time." Dash doesn't argue at least, but he also doesn't continue, and after a while Brutus picks up the slack. "You know how else I know he was a good man? You're a good kid. Whatever you got from him, it's easy to tell it was all good things."

Dash lets one hand trail through the rocks and sand below him, lifts his arm above the surface and opens his fingers so the grains billow back down in a murky brown cloud. "He taught me a lot," he says. "He wasn't my dad or my mentor or anything, but …"

"He was good for you," Brutus supplies.

"Yeah," Dash says, and then, finally, he talks. Not an avalanche or a rock slide but a trickle of memory here, an anecdote there, a piece of advice or a little thing Rigel said to cut the tension when they were out late on patrol and Dash was squirrelly from too much waiting and not enough action. A stupid Two joke that Dash had to have explained to him. Little things that on their own don't sound like much, but when stitched together, start to form the tapestry of a man.

"And he just, he understood me," Dash says later. "Lene and Marius, I love them, but they were top of their class in the Program. They got headhunted by the Academy before they even finished detox. I had to fight for it, you know, there are only so many spots for non-Twos, and they don't take a lot of candidates from Four. I had to fight so hard to get here and Lene — sometimes she'd just say these things and I'd want to scream because she didn't get it. It's not that she didn't deserve it or she didn't work hard, but she could do in two minutes what took me months."

"But not Rigel," Brutus says.

"Yeah. Because of his injury, you know, the one that knocked him out of volunteering. They didn't want to let him in. Tried to make him go into politics or law or something, but he fought it." Dash's eyes glow. "He fought and he won and he _kicked ass_ , and he saw that in me. He knew what it was like to have everyone tell you that you can't, and how hard it is not to say screw it and just go home. He respected me for that, and I'm so grateful. For someone who understood me for that."

Brutus chews on his thoughts for a bit, waiting to see if Dash continues, but the boy falls silent again. "If I were in his place, I'd've done the same thing. You're the exactly the kind of kid any mentor — mentor figure, whatever — would want to have. Mentors measure their legacy through their kids, and you're the best he could hope for. Speaks well of you and him."

Dash's throat bobs, his eyes falling closed. Brutus can talk to him about how Rigel must have felt as much as he likes, but he doesn't know, there are no private conversations about Dash he can reveal to make the boy feel better. He's just a kid who saw his mentor shot to death in front of him, and there's nothing Brutus can —

( _Odin collapses on the hovercraft, blood pooling across his shirt, a look of shock plastered across his features — Odin's hand in his, grip weak, breath rattling in his chest —_ )

"I'm sorry," Brutus says abruptly. Dash turns to look at him, water sloshing at the movement. "Talking about legacy and everything. I know that means shit when you'd rip your own heart out to get him back."

For a long second there's no sound besides the low hiss of gravelly sand as the pull of the water tugs the tiny bits of rock out towards the centre of the lake. "You lost your mentor too," Dash says slowly. "I'm sorry, I wasn't —"

"No, that's not what I mean," Brutus says, letting an edge of warning into his voice. "I didn't mean feel guilty or stop feeling bad. I lost people, you lost people, I meant — I meant, I get it. I get it, and it fucking _sucks_."

Dash laughs, a quiet sound that breaks a little in the middle, and he drags a wet hand down his face, but somehow it feels lighter than before. "Yeah, it does, huh? It really sucks. And I don't even wish that other people died instead of him, because the whole war was one big mess."

"Yeah." Brutus thinks of the terrified kid in Peacekeeper whites shouting _Don't shoot, you'll hit the Victors!,_ Petra in the hovercraft with her head bowed and steel and exhaustion in her voice saying _They didn't mean to kill him,_ the whole shitshow tangle of conflicted loyalties that led to Rigel facing down his old commander with their guns pointed at each other's heads. Not much comfort in vindictive revenge fantasies here.

Brutus reaches down, rakes his fingers through the sand until he finds a smooth, flat rock. He picks it up, smooths the mud off its surface and tosses it up and down. "They teach you how to skip rocks in Four?" Brutus asks.

Dash scours him with an incredulous glare that's worlds better than the bleak blankness he's been wearing for the past while. "They teach _you_ to skip rocks up in the mountains?" he shoots back, finding his own stone and lurching to his feet. He flicks his wrist and his stone leaps over the water some ten times before it goes so far Brutus loses track. "Do they teach us to skip rocks," he mutters, and Brutus grins.

Brutus only manages six before his falls, and Dash lets out a triumphant grunt. "Yeah, yeah," Brutus says, and Dash actually grins.

They go back and forth until they run out of stones within reach, and Dash holds the last one in his palm, rubbing his thumb over the surface. "I feel like I should do something. It's like this big hole and I don't know how to close it. He's gone and all these people will never know him, and it doesn't feel right. I want to honour him but I don't know how."

Brutus thinks of years of dead tributes, nothing to their memory but a headstone and a photograph and a name etched on a wall, their means of death added to a list memorized by hundreds of kids for a twisted entrance examination that no longer exists. Forgotten footnotes in someone else's story. "What did he want?"

Dash tilts his head. "What do you mean?"

"He turned against the Capitol when he saved my life, but he didn't have to stay. They said you could leave once you dropped me off, but he didn't. He stayed. How come?"

Odin fought for the wrong side until the end, loyal to President Snow and the Capitol even after they took Brutus away from him, even when Snow brought Petra to the Capitol as his guest-not-hostage, but the older Brutus gets the more he wonders how much of it was real and how much of it was brutal pragmatism. Odin saw the big picture, the children he'd sworn to protect and the devastation that rained down on those who didn't bow their heads, and so he'd done everything in his power all his life to make sure his loved ones followed the rules and never questioned. How much did he believe, how much did he make himself believe so he'd never slip, and when did it stop mattering? Brutus will never know, but he and all his kids were safe because Odin instilled his values in them and that means he did his job. In this new world, Brutus can only honour his memory by building a country where that kind of self-deception and self-censor and long-game double-life isn't necessary, for people in Two or anywhere.

"He said it was the right thing to do," Dash says slowly. "He said sometimes you know the right thing because it's the one that makes you want to run screaming. He loved this country and the people and he was always trying to make Panem better, even before. And he let his friends call him traitor to his face because he believed in what we were doing." Dash exhales, shaky but determined. "I think he'd want to see Panem fixed — for everyone."

"So fix her," Brutus says. Dash snorts and wipes his nose on his sleeve, and Brutus mock-glares and points a finger on him. "Hey! Do I look like I spout off inspirational bullshit as a hobby? Yeah, I didn't think so. Look, kid, too many people died for this, good people. So we're gonna fix this country and glue it back together if I have to pick every idiot up and knock their heads together myself."

Dash grins a little. "You sound like him sometimes, when he got pissed off. Not the words, maybe, but the sentiment, I guess."

"Yeah, well, we know what we're talking about," Brutus says. "I love this country, and so did he, enough to die for her. And I tried, twice, but no such luck, so I guess you and me, we have to figure out how to live."

Dash runs fingers through his sopping hair. "It's not so easy."

"Believe me, I know." Brutus shoves Dash until he topples back into the water, and the kid sputters and rolls over to float on his back but his face smooths out a little. "But you said it already. Rigel wanted to see Panem be what she could be. So that's what you work for, and one day you'll build a country he'd be proud of."

Dash takes a deep breath. "And until then?"

"Day by day," Brutus says. This question, at least, he knows how to answer. He asked it, once. So does every Victor at least once. "Sunrise to sunrise. And if that's too hard, you break it down more and more until it's something you can handle. But the sun still comes up every morning. It still smells like a new world after it rains. And one day you'll go back to Four and you'll see the ocean hasn't changed one damn bit and you and all your problems will feel about two inches tall."

The kid looks down at the rock in his hand, then leans back and lets it fly. The stone bounds over the water and disappears, still jumping, and Brutus reaches over and pulls Dash in for a one-armed hug. Dash leans in for a second, letting his head rest, and Brutus holds on until he feels Dash's muscles tense in preparation for pulling away. He lets go just in time, and Dash stands back and tugs at his wet clothes. "You must be freezing."

"How about _you_ , Four boy?" Brutus shoots back. "C'mon, let's head back in before I have to bring Marius back an icicle."

"Not to mention we stole a car."

"Requisitioned."

"Requisitioned a car," Dash amends, smiling a little. "I thought you were all about the rules."

"Some things are more important," Brutus says. He takes one last look out over the lake, drinking it all in, then claps Dash on the shoulder again and heads back.

The boy falls asleep for real on the drive back to the Capitol, wrapped in a blanket Brutus snagged from the back seat. Brutus checks the map and takes the long way back to give him a little longer, but when they arrive Dash stretches and looks around with eyes finally free of haunting. "Thanks," he says. "I needed that."

"Don't worry about it," Brutus says, feeling a full-body exhale. "I think I did too."

* * *

Paylor's president, preparations for the district council elections are in full swing, and winter is finally waning when Paylor arrives at the Victor barracks for a meeting with the survivors. It feels strange, off somehow, but it's not until they're all in the common room, sitting on couches or leaning against the wall, that Lyme figures out why: it's that she came to them, rather than summoning everyone to her, and she actually knocked and asked. No one opened their bedroom door to find herself sitting in their kitchenette having made herself a sandwich from their fridge, or looking through their personal photographs and commenting idly on the cuteness and fragility of their youngest relatives.

A low bar, to be sure, but it's nice to finally have a leader who doesn't bring out a shovel to dig underneath it.

"It's time to get you home," Paylor says with little preamble. "I know district consensus on the Victors has never been easy, and while I wasn't kidding about democracy, human rights and decency are not something that should be put to vote. I think it's for the best if we get you relocated and settled before the district council forms. That way it will be done, you'll be set, and everyone can move on."

Beetee clears his throat. "There is the matter of logistics. The Capitol destroyed much of the infrastructure in Three to protect valuable assets from the rebels. The Victors' Village was part of that damage. There's the issue of what happened in District 1. And District 12 is —"

"On fire?" Haymitch supplies drily, arms crossed. "I guess we could make that a tourist thing. Come to Twelve, see the giant flaming hellmouth!"

"They say the mines could burn for another two hundred-fifty years," Beetee says, giving Haymitch a companionable nod. "A fascinating engineering problem, but perhaps not one that argues in favour for immediate resettlement."

"Not to mention some of us would have to go back alone," Cora says, her quiet, serious gaze flicking to Johanna Mason, who folds her arms and stares up at the ceiling. "It's fine for me. I've got my family, but not everybody does. After all this, we're going to send people back to an empty Village full of ghosts? Sounds like a recipe for misery to me."

Lyme watches Paylor, who sits in her chair and lets them talk, a quiet, satisfied expression on her face. They're making her point for her, Lyme thinks. She's already thought of this, and she has a solution for it, but if she'd brought it up first they would have protested. Instead she's letting them argue and come around to her side without saying a word. It's an impressive tactic. When Paylor finally steps in, Lyme thinks, _here we go_.

"You're right," Paylor says. "All of you. Many of the Villages and the districts were hit during the war and can't realistically support anyone right now. Many of the districts harbour anti-Victor sentiment that we can't be sure it's safe to send anyone. And the Capitol used isolation as a tactic to demoralize and harm the mental health and wellbeing of Victors for decades before so many of you lost friends in the Quarter Quell."

Johanna drums her fingers on her bicep. "Looks like someone has a genius solution."

Paylor doesn't take the bait. "Consolidation. We've been looking it over, and Two, Four and Nine have the resources, the space and the appropriate civilian attitude. There are opportunities for you to help out in the district if you want to work, but it's not necessary if you want to focus on your own recovery."

Lyme's chest leaps at the thought of returning home, but Misha speaks up, dubious. "They did hit our Village, though. We got evacuated in the middle of the night and everything."

"Only the community centre," Paylor says. "We ran a fly-by to check. Everything else is in tact. And outside the Capitol, the medical facilities in Two remain the best in the district." She looks around. "Also, while the ongoing Victor stipend isn't something that we can afford to continue, we have created a relocation fund that will be given to everyone to help with the move and make sure you're all right starting out. We also reached out to the local community to make them aware, and they're all willing to help out."

"When do we get to choose?" asks Angus. Lyme could never get a read on him and his sense of humour, kind of like Brutus but on a slower burn, and he leans back and laces his hands behind his head. Edwin died fast and messy in the Arena and they tortured Angus in the Capitol for weeks, but none of that shows on his face. "I'd like to put my name in for sea and sun and lobsters for breakfast everyday, if you please."

Finnick, sitting with Annie curled up against his side, gives an exaggerated eye roll. "We don't eat lobsters for breakfast everyday, you know. We had quotas. All the best stuff went to the Capitol."

"Not with that attitude," Angus says. Anyone else would have shot it back, sharp and sniping; he says it slow, non-combative, but there's still a zing to it. "And anyway, I'm betting those quotas have changed now. Share and share alike, right?"

Paylor raises a hand to stop them before the wave of banter overtakes the conversation completely. "We'll give you a few days to think about where you'd like to go. You can discuss it with each other, work out the details. I'll be back for another meeting at the end of the week so we can firm it all up, and hopefully get everyone home by the end of the month. You've all been through enough."

Later that night, Lyme and Brutus pass a bottle of something purple and cloying between them as they sit together on the roof. "You think anyone's gonna apply to join us in Two?" Brutus asks, taking a drink and making a face at the sparkly flavoured cough syrup.

Lyme tries to imagine any of the others volunteering to spend the rest of their lives in the mountains and pine trees when they could be enjoying the ocean breeze or the wide open plains. Easy to disappear in Nine, even with the harsh winters, and District 4 has a climate that half of Panem speaks about in open envy. Finnick has already begun his campaign to convince Johanna to join him and Annie as the godmother of their baby ("How about whiskey aunt," Johanna said, grimacing). Lyme caught the surviving Ones debating which had the more satisfying aesthetic, lying on the beach eating shellfish or fucking off to start a ranch somewhere and never speak to another human again, and Cora had gone to speak to Katniss pretty much right away.

"I doubt it," Lyme says. Brutus hands her the bottle and she stares at it for a long moment, turning it over in her hands. "I mean, it really is the district only a native could love. We've got the snow, sunset before five pm…"

"Bears," Brutus supplies.

"Exactly." Lyme salutes him with the bottle. "I don't see too many people knocking down our doors. And we're not exactly the most welcoming crowd, either. I know we've circled our own wagons for the last fifty years. It's fine, really."

"Not exactly the greatest message for postwar reunification, though," Brutus says. He leans back, props his feet up against the ledge that runs around the edge of the roof and looks out at the city.

Lyme shrugs. "No, but we'll survive. We always have."

The day before Coin's deadline, Ronan calls them all together. Lyme tries to mask her surprise and hopes she succeeds, out of respect for Ronan, but they haven't had an official Victor meeting since the war ended, and she all but figured they were done with them. Losing so many shook Ronan, and he's withdrawn from any kind of official leadership role except when Paylor calls for him, and none of them have tried to push it back on him. Lyme has stepped up to take over some of the Victor operations, since she has the most liaisons within the rebels, but it feels uncomfortable, almost like she's usurping.

"I received a request regarding the consolidation efforts," Ronan says. A quick murmur runs through the room, and Lyme exchanges glances with Brutus, who shrugs. "It's from District 3. Beetee asked whether he and Eibhlin could come join us in Two."

"The cuckoos?" Enobaria bursts out, incredulous, garnering her a sharp look from Brutus, but Lyme knows her well enough to see when it's genuine shock rather than an attempt to be provoking. "Oh don't look at me like that. They've spent the last however many years holed up in their district doing weird experiments. Why do they want to come here? The Village with the most test subjects?"

"I didn't ask," Ronan says politely, a hint of his old humour, but that's enough to stop Enobaria before she spirals. What's good enough for Ronan is good enough for the rest of them, even their wildest Victor. "We aren't accepting applications for the Program, we're extending courtesy to fellow Victors in an extenuating circumstance. They made a request, I don't think we need to ask them to write us an essay."

"What about a photo collage?" Misha asks, full on shit-eating, and she's rewarded when Ronan's mouth actually twitches. As always Lyme is proud of her girl's talent for being an absolute shit to keep the people around her from slipping into depression. "Video essay? Interpretive, uh … circuit board?"

Ronan gives her a firm, if indulgent, look, and Misha falls silent. "Be that as it may, are there any problems with the request?"

Enobaria folds her arms across her chest. "We don't understand them and they don't understand us. What? It's true. And oh, let's see, Beetee tried to have Brutus and me fried on the beach and left behind while he and everyone else got a hovercraft ticket out of there."

"We also did try to kill him," Brutus points out, matter of fact. "What happens in the Arena stays in the Arena."

"That wasn't the Arena, that was rebel bullshit, and those are different rules!" Enobaria spits out. The whole line of her body has gone tense, and when Nero tries to put an arm around her body she shoves him off, shaking and livid. "I got left behind and they ripped my teeth out because those precious rebels didn't think we were good enough for their plans, and Three was in on it and they knew. I don't want them in my house. I don't want to play nice neighbours with people who were going to let us burn for their fucking revolution."

Lyme exhales. Of course it's Enobaria who has the problem, and of fucking course it's Lyme who has the one piece of information that might change her mind. The war burned off the animosity between them, leaving things in a strange, unbalanced truce, but that doesn't mean they're friends. It doesn't mean Enobaria is ready to hear reason from Lyme when she's worked herself up into a lather.

Still, she has to try. "Beetee tried to warn you," Lyme says. "When you and Brutus were hiding in the tree line. He knew you were there, and he said his plan out loud anyway. It's why the plan to electrify the sand made no sense. Why Finnick convinced you to meet him at the tree when it all went haywire. They were going to try to force Plutarch to bring you with them anyway, but when the Arena exploded the rebels prioritized getting the hell out of there."

Enobaria shoots her a withering look. "So, what, he's the picture of altruism now?"

Lyme glares back. "No, I'm just saying they didn't leave you there to die, that's all, so if Beetee can stand to see you and Brutus without remembering Wiress bleeding out into the water, maybe you could have them around the Village without a massive crisis of conscience."

Enobaria hisses through her teeth. "Gloss killed Wiress."

"And Plutarch left you behind," Lyme says, pointed. "Do we leave it at the gates or don't we?"

Brutus speaks up slowly. "We could let them have Odin's house." Petra stiffens, and he reaches over and pats her on the knee, apologetic but not unyielding. "It's big enough for both of them, and it's got his library and his greenhouse, I bet they'd like that. And he'd like it go to use."

"We can discuss the particulars later, but that seems reasonable enough," Ronan says. "Anyone else?"

"I don't know why people keep looking at me," Adessa says with icy primness. Three of Callista's cats lounge across her lap, an affront she bears with heroic quietude. "I certainly have no personal stake in the matter. But the girl is suffering a tremendous amount of trauma following her post-Arena ordeals and her recent interrogation. None of the other districts have even a hope of helping her. Ours is the only one that makes sense. Politics aside, Beetee is making the logical choice for his Victor."

That quiets everyone for a while. Paylor had lauded Two's medical facilities, and she was right, but the psychological factor isn't one to overlook. Given all Eibhlin has suffered in the past few years, Two's counselling services are as important to her recovery as any doctors and trauma surgeons. If nothing else, it will be an interesting test of their skills, to see how well they handle someone who didn't get to spend their post-Centre life in relative comfort and safety.

"I say yes," Brutus says, blunt and brooking no disagreement. "They asked to join us when nobody else did. If you ask me, that's making a point. I think we should thank 'em for it."

"I have no idea how this is going to work," Claudius says, reaching a hand over toward one of the cats and pulling it back when it hisses at him, "but yeah, why not."

The vote passes with everyone in favour — even a reluctant Enobaria — except for Petra, who abstains. "That's it, then," Ronan says, slapping his knee in lieu of his usual podium. "I'll let Beetee know before the official meeting. Thank you for your thoughts, everyone, and welcome to our brand new world."

* * *

It's still standing.

They told him it would be. Claudius even badgered Beetee to find him surveillance footage just to see, but it's one thing to peer at grainy photographs taken from a hovercraft. It's something else to stand in front of his home for the first time since the Reaping and see the hint of buildings through the trees. Claudius sucks in a ragged breath and digs his nails into his palms, and he's not the only one. Behind him, Lyme breathes slow and even, the way she does when there are cameras on her and she shakes the hand of the boy or girl who killed her tribute six months ago. Brutus lets out a quiet _fuck_ like a stone dropping into a pool and sinking to the bottom before the ripples form. The other Victors stand in silence; not one of them left the Village with any assurance they'd come back.

Not all of them did.

For this reason Paylor agreed to give them two weeks to themselves before sending Beetee and Eibhlin to join them. Ostensibly it's to let them settle in and clean up and inventory anything they might need, but really, it's so they can get all this messy shit out of the way before bringing strangers into their space.

A long pause, then Enobaria says, "Fuckers better not have touched any of my shit while I was gone," in a deadly, lilting sing-song that means she's baring the fangs she no longer has, and Claudius sputters in a startled laugh.

The front of the gate's been smashed in, but someone's fixed it as best they can, wrenched it back into place and hammered out most of the dents. Three members of the volunteer task force from down in ex-Career town stand with their backs to the gate, and they're not holding weapons but they hold the aura of an armed guard all the same.

The leader, a woman with a broken nose and hard eyes, steps forward. She addresses all of them, her gaze moving across the ranks of assembled Victors, giving all of them her attention. Claudius wonders whether she made the final three her year, if the only thing standing between her and the Arena had been that the mentor clicked with someone else instead. "We locked it down as soon as we could, but it took us a while to get mobilized. Much quicker to assemble a mob than a strike team, but we drove them out in the end. They've all been dealt with."

It's the kind of sentence that, from President Snow, would make Claudius' skin crawl, but from a Two its settles warm and comforting in his stomach like a bowl of hot oatmeal on a cold day. Nobody had a good day on the other side of that exchange, but no one ended up black-bagged and tortured to death, so good enough. And nobody ever said Claudius was nice.

"How much was taken?" Ronan asks, and the last few months have aged him but the squad still stands up even straighter, like someone jabbed them in the back with a pin.

"Not much, all things considered. Most of it was damage, not actual theft. Broken windows, furniture, that sort of thing. We caught a few of them and returned the items back to the Village. Anything we couldn't identify as belonging to a particular house went in a communal pile."

They talk it over for a few minutes, and in the end Ronan thanks them for their service and their respect. "If you'll give me your names, I'll see if I can find some sort of remunaration for you," he says.

"No," the woman says, and the others in the squad agree with her, shaking their heads and murmuring in the negative. "Anyone setting foot in the Village while you were gone - for any reason - that's serious disrespect, and none of us here could deal with that. It's an honour enough being able to protect it for you; twice over to see you come back."

Ronan holds out his hand, veined and wrinkled and still strong enough to grab Claudius by the ear until he winces. They each shake it, and from their flared nostrils and darting eyes it's likely an even better reward to touch him than any money would be. When Claudius was a kid at the Centre, he used to stand in the Hall of Victory and look at the portraits of the Victors — those brave, beautiful teenagers whose eyes followed him when he moved — so he gets the sense of awe. Eight years later, he still can't make himself believe he's on that wall.

The Village still smells the same, the fresh scent of the pine and spruce floating over the deeper, more pungent cedar and mountain juniper that makes half the Victors sniffle come pollen season. For a minute Claudius could close his eyes and pretend nothing changed, except it's not quite right. The houses are quiet, no smoke from the chimneys, no one sitting on porches or tossing a ball between them or practicing their aim on tree trunks. When they get closer, the sunlight glints off the first broken window and Claudius sucks in a breath along with everyone else.

The path branches off ahead of them, winding back through the trees. There's a pause, a shared handful of heartbeats, then without a word they split off into groups, staying close to each other. Misha helps Devon manoeuvre his chair along the bumpy path. Nero wraps his arm around Enobaria's shoulders and pulls her in close — glances over at Lyme, who nods — then takes the right fork, down and around the curve. The handful of former rebels laden down with cat carriers follows him, all of them looking exhausted and ready to finally get rid of their extra passengers.

"Well," Lyme says, the word trailing like there's something else supposed to come after, but she doesn't finish the sentence. Claudius reaches over and takes her hand like the first day she led him to the Village, and for a second time skitters sideways. But it's different now, they're different: the calluses on their hands are wrong, on the fingertips from holding guns instead of swords; Lyme's bare wrist with its strip of pale, scarred skin; Lyme gripping back just as hard, not in reassurance but mutual desperation. Claudius falls back to the present with a _thud_.

"Ready, sweetheart?" Brutus asks Petra. His voice comes out hoarse, and he holds her a little too tight and presses his cheek against her hair a little too long for it to be just about her comfort. Petra nods, face screwed up in determination. Brutus closes his eyes and kisses the top of her head. "C'mon. Light won't last forever."

Petra curls her fingers in his sweater. "Let's get it over with," she says, raising her chin. "It's not going to get any less weird, right?"

"Probably not," Brutus admits. "Okay, let's go."

The four of them walk together down the centre-right path, the ground hard from the months of frost. A pine cone jabs under Claudius' boot, and he presses down extra hard to hear the bits of bark crunch against the ground.

"They stole my bourbon," Lyme says, shutting the cupboard door. "Well, at least the rioting masses have taste."

"That's what you get for keeping the good stuff." The banter is familiar, easy, and they fall back into it without thinking. It's easier to find an oasis of normalcy through chatter than it is to remember Petra's howl of grief. Claudius steps over the broken glass on the kitchen floor. All in all Lyme's house isn't too bad; a couple things smashed and her liquor gone, but nowhere near what Claudius had feared.

Then again, they are near the back of the Village; could be that not as many looters made it out this far. Claudius swings himself up onto the barstool and looks over the counter at the television mounted on the far wall. He'd be surprised that's still there except Lyme almost never watches it so her machine is old, serviceable but nothing special. Devon and Misha, with their thing for sports and games, probably had theirs snatched instead.

"How are the swords?" Claudius asks after a minute, as Lyme disappears around the corner to the main room.

"Still here," she calls back. "I'm guessing some things are sacred."

"I didn't look in the fridge," Claudius says when Lyme comes back in, her hands in her pockets. "I'm afraid what might be breeding in there."

He doesn't expect her to flinch, but she does. Claudius blinks at her, leaning back to study her as Lyme shifts her weight from one foot to the other. "Okay," she says finally, and tugs her hands out of her pockets to run her fingers through her hair. "Misha already bit my head off for this, so might as well."

Lyme crosses the kitchen and tugs open the refrigerator. Claudius braces himself for the sickly-sweet smell of rot to sting his nose, but instead there's nothing; he whirls around to look at the fridge and nearly bites off the tip of his tongue because it's empty. No produce, no meat or cheese, no containers of leftovers; not even the bottles of condiments at the back that have joined the legion of things she no longer remembers buying.

Mentors who go to the Capitol for the Games tend to clean out their fridge of anything that might go off over the next month, but not like this. This is methodical, pathological almost. It looks like she even scrubbed the inside, and while Lyme isn't the messiest person in the world, she usually doesn't get on her knees to clean unless she's upset. Claudius can tell her mood from the state of her floors.

It takes him a minute to get it, and when he does, his eyes widen. "You weren't coming back."

Lyme lets the door swing shut and wraps her arms around herself. "I thought I might not be, if they really went through with it. You know how we all hoped that maybe it would be a scare tactic and they'd take it back, but. If they didn't - I had a feeling. And I didn't - if I didn't come back, I didn't want Nero to have to go through my fridge and throw everything out. Turns out Misha went to do it, saw it empty and figured it out herself. That's half the reason she lost her shit at me when we met up again."

Claudius bites the inside of his lip. "Shit," he says finally.

"Yeah," she says, quiet.

"I wish I'd been that smart, even if you did get yelled at," Claudius says, trying for joking, and he doesn't quite pull it off but it's a valiant effort, anyway. "I think I left a hunk of cheese in the back of mine. Whoever got stuck on cleanup duty, I probably owe them dinner."

Lyme's mouth curves a little, and she ruffles his hair. "C'mon, let's head over there."

Claudius' blood freezes, but he nods and follows her out through the front door. What if the place is destroyed? Claudius was never a popular Victor even before his defection; if any of them deserved a house torn to pieces, it's probably him. He almost tries telling Lyme they should go check on Brutus and Petra, or Nero, or any of the others — what if Ronan's front steps got damaged and he has trouble getting inside — but he gives up before the thought even forms. Even in his craziest days just out of the Arena he never would have sunk to anything so desperate, and Lyme would have to be much, much more damaged to fall for it.

"Hey, listen," Lyme says, letting her fingers brush his wrist as they walk. "Whatever happens, we'll fix it. They can't have burned it down or taken it apart brick by brick. It'll be okay."

"There's going to be shortages all over Panem, and we don't know if we're ever going to get another stipend," Claudius says, the words sitting heavy in his throat. "How are we going to get the money?"

"We'll find a way." Her voice is harder than he expected, and when he glances at her, Lyme's jaw is set and her eyes narrowed. "You went through hell for the sake of this country. You're getting your house back if I have to collect stones from the road and build it myself."

They come through the grove of trees at the edge of Claudius' yard, and he staggers and sinks to his knees right there in the cool grass because his house is fine. The door's jammed open like the rest of them, but there's no furniture thrown out on the lawn, no broken windows. It's his house, half the size of a normal Victor's and everything he ever wanted.

Lyme drops her hand to his head, combing her fingers through his hair. Claudius leans back into the touch. "C'mon, up, let's get you inside, check the damage. Door's broken, so they probably took a few things."

At least that isn't as big a deal; like a lot of Victors, having the money was more about the reassurance he'd never need to worry about that again, not so he could fill his house with stuff. The most important thing to Claudius is standing next to him. Everything else is fluff.

He thinks that until he walks in the front door and steps on a piano key, the first of many strewn across the floor.

It's like Four's poisoned claws in his gut all over again: first the shock, then the rigor, and finally, the pain. Lyme bought Claudius the piano during the first months of his recovery; he learned to play on it, the first time he'd ever made something instead of practicing to destroy. He'd learned music on that instrument; it saw him through his rages, gave him something else to do with his anger than let it build up and boil until he yearned for blood.

It took Nero and Brutus to move it into the Village; half the mob together wouldn't be able to lift it, much less take it anywhere, and so, out of frustration or swept up in the frenzy or what, someone destroyed it, just because they could.

"It's okay," Lyme says immediately, her hands on his arm, tight and strong. "D, breathe, it's okay. We'll fix it."

Claudius presses a hand to his breastbone, digging the heel of his palm into his chest. "It's not a big deal," he says. "I mean, people died. Twelve got burned to the ground. This is just a piano. It's not even useful, it's just a thing that makes sounds."

"We'll fix it," Lyme says again, her voice turning hard, and she rubs her thumb across his shoulder. "And I don't want to hear you playing a reverse Misery Reaping and belittling what you've went through compared to everyone else, you hear me? Paylor has a hard enough time stopping that sentiment already."

"Yes ma'am," Claudius says, but he's shuddering now. He reaches up and grips her hand. "I don't want to see the rest, but I'm guessing that means I have to."

Lyme squeezes hard, then lets go. "You're right about one thing. Whatever's in there, it's something we can fix. We've been through the stuff that can't be changed or taken back. There aren't any more lines of no return left."

Any Career knows how to calculate odds and values, and if there's one positive thing that came from destroying a piano, it's that you can't do it in a few seconds. By the time he finds it — the frame smashed in, the wood splintering from the force of what he guesses were several well-placed kicks — Claudius has passed through the entire house, and that's the bulk of the damage. A few chairs knocked over, some photos torn from the walls and their glass covers cracked, but everything else is mostly left alone.

That doesn't make it any easier to stand in the door to the music room and look at the ruin of his first instrument, one of the major physical turning points in his post-Arena life, but it's almost fitting. One sacrifice to save the rest.

"Hey," Lyme says, picking her way through the room and peering behind the wreckage of the piano. She says it once and Claudius doesn't pay attention, so she says it again, sharper, to get his attention. "Hey! D, come here."

He does, nearly tripping when his feet twang against a tangle of piano wires. At first he doesn't see it, just more broken wood and pieces of plastic, but then he does: his cello, lying in the middle of the mess, unharmed. Claudius pushes past Lyme and drops to his knees on the floor, reaching out and pulling his cello into his lap, cradling it against his chest like a child. There's a crack up one side but nothing he can't fix, and after standing in his piano's guts it's like finding a living baby in the middle of a pile of corpses.

Claudius presses his forehead against the varnished wood, the air burning in his chest and forcing its way out through his eyes, leaving hot trails down his cheeks. Lyme lowers herself to her knees beside him, and she wraps her arms around him and rests her head against his shoulder. "This is what it's going to be like, you know," she says. "That's what recovery is. Little things that break us and little things that help us stand. It's just like the Arena all over again, only this time, it's the whole country at the same time." Lyme pulls back and clasps Claudius by the back of the neck. "Play for me?"

Claudius fishes his bow from beneath one of the piano's side panels. A few of the strands have snapped, but no more than would have happened after a frenzied playing session. He finds his resin in the corner, its edges rough and flaking but still good. "I have a better idea," he says.

He carries the cello out to the back porch, wrestles a chair out from the corner and sets up. It's freezing but that stops paying attention once he gets the cello tuned and feels the first true tones resonate through his fingers. Claudius picks a concerto for spring, a piece that starts out with low sweeps across the strings for the cold of winter that burst forth into a shower of dancing notes to mark the flowers and the trills of birdsong. After that he pulls back a little, finds something more meditative, mulling, then shifts again to an old folk dance that Emory once taught him by memory because she didn't know the notes but she had a great ear.

When he looks up the first time Nero has joined him, Enobaria bundled in a giant sweater and curled up with her back to the wall, eyes shut. The next time it's Misha and Devon, passing around cups of steaming wine. One by one the others trickle in as Claudius continues to play, fingers stiff and shoulders aching after so long without practice, most of them bringing blankets or chairs or snacks unearthed from the backs of their pantries to be shared between everyone. The last to show up are Brutus and Petra, who stand together at the edge of the yard, Petra half buried in Brutus' jacket.

The first rays of pink from the sunset paint the sky above the line of trees, Misha and Lyme gather wood for the firepit, and Claudius lets his eyes fall closed as the music from his cello spirals up toward the cobalt sky.

* * *

When Ronan turned 50, just after the second Quarter Quell, he had a solid crop of Victors, the most out of any district, and everyone in the next generation of mentors had at least one Victor of their own. He hadn't sat in the seat for at least a decade, and he did his sponsor work at parties and whatnot during the year, not in the den during the Games. The second Quarter Quell passed without any new threats (unlike Victor prostitution after the 25th). Ronan looked around his Village and realized he had successfully built his empire and handed it off to his children; time to step back and let them do it. And so, without fanfare, Ronan retired.

A week later, having nearly driven himself and the rest of the Village mad out of boredom, Ronan just about reconsidered. How were there so many hours in the day now? Had they added more since he last checked? What did people do with their time? Ronan went for long walks through the Village, silent and restless and edgy; he started looking forward to his next meeting with Coriolanus. He almost missed vomiting up poisoned petit fours. Ronan drank a lot of brandy and tried to figure out how one writes an unresignation letter.

A week after that, Ronan opened his door to find Caius, his first Victor and now a proud mentor, standing on the front stoop with a pair of droopy dogs in his arms. "Here," Caius said in affectionate exasperation. "They were trained up to be hunting dogs, but this one's lazy and the other one's gun-shy. Drive them crazy instead of us."

He shoved the dogs into Ronan's arms and walked away, leaving his mentor baffled and speechless. He stared at Caius' retreating back until his Victor turned the corner, then down at the two oversized pups in his arms, apparently content to sit with their legs awkwardly dangling and huff hot breaths in his ear.

"What," Ronan said out loud. One dog licked his chin. The other gnawed on his sweater.

He named them Bud and Boomer. They lived with Ronan for just over ten years.

He took them out on the trails, not for hunting - Bud was still lazy and Boomer still gun-shy - but just for the exercise. He watched them run around and scent the air and sniff out rabbit dens. Whenever the deaths of children lay heavy on his shoulders, whenever Ronan closed his eyes at night and imagined throats flayed open and blood spilling out onto the grass, he took the dogs to the lake and threw stick after stick for them to fetch. After they tired of the game they flopped on his legs and held him captive while they napped, tongues lolling and sides heaving. Ronan would press his hands against their warm, coarse fur and cherish every flutter of pulse, every intake of breath, enjoying the tactile reminders of life.

After nearly a decade Bud's eyesight started to go and Boomer's hips gave out from under him, but they both held on another year or two. One morning Boomer didn't wake up, and within two weeks Bud followed. Ronan buried them both under the rowan tree in his yard, and for weeks after that he sat out beneath the tree, watching the branches wave in the breeze and wondering how it was he could see some hundred-odd kids consigned to death over the course of his career and never cry, but a couple old hounds did him in.

No one bothered him except Callista, who'd lost Octavius - over 20 years old, that cat - just the summer before. She joined him under the tree one afternoon with a glass of wine tucked against her chest, and they sat in silence while the leaves rustled and a butterfly flitted over the lawn in peace without having to flee from a pair of curious, slobbering hounds.

"They steal pieces of our souls, I think," Callista said finally, not looking at him. She hadn't touched her wine. "That's how they get their own."

No more dogs, Ronan vowed. Not again. And he meant it, too, until the year young Finnick Odair pried apart their girl's ribcage and tore out her heart with her body still wrapped in silver netting; when their boy slipped on a rock and went down hard mid-chase and Four's golden child twisted his fingers in his hair and held his head in the stream until the cannon fired. When Ronan left the Capitol after the traditional post-Games party extravaganza with his head full of sponsor whispers, jealous and predatory and wanting; when he saw Coriolanus' eyes glint with the promise of more money for one young, untouched body than he'd ever dreamed of. When he looked at Mags, thin-lipped and unapologetic, and wondered what went through her mind when she told that child to smile and toss his head and blow kisses to the audience.

Ronan took the shiny Capitol passenger train back with two pine boxes, two silent fourth-generation mentors and a heart full of bile. When the mentors headed off to the field of sacrifice for the internment, Ronan hopped in his truck and headed out away from the Village. He came back with Homer and Jax, curled up and snoring in the passenger seat of his pickup.

Jax and Homer grew up as Panem waned, her former glory fading under murmurs of revolution and uprisings as his dogs learned to climb the trails and root out pheasants. While the rest of Panem shuddered under new taxes and higher quotas and increased Peacekeeper presence his dogs slumbered in the sun and rolled over to have their bellies scratched. They whined when the Panem Anthem played during the Parade of the Fallen and dropped down on the floor to watch every mandatory broadcast, wagging their tails at the sight of President Snow's greying head onscreen.

And now they're gone, killed by Coin's rebels or starved to death or frozen solid in the long and bitter winter, because it's not enough that Ronan had to lose his friends and children, the war had to take his dogs, too.

A week after they return to the Village Ronan sits on his porch, holding a drink he can't remember making and that maybe he didn't; Artemisia takes care of him now, loyal even as her founder slips away. He hasn't left his house since coming back, what's the point when Ronan has lost so much, bled so much, and nothing matters. He sits on his porch in silence and thinks about dead friends and dead colleagues and dead children districts over as age creeps into his bones.

Because now he's going mad; over the swish of branches and the chirping of birds comes a familiar baying, sharp and aching in his chest. It's been months since he's seen his hounds, and he's lost his mind because he hears them now.

In the next second he thinks it's his time, that they've come to bring him home. And how funny is it that it's his dogs and not his Victors or his friends, not Caius and Luna or Lumina or Eluria come to take him away but animals, though maybe it's fitting somehow. He's never betrayed his dogs, never sold their souls or used them to pay the price for someone else's safety. Except that can't be it because there's no light or mystic sensations, no leaving his body behind or tunnels or flying into the sky, and if this is death Ronan gives it a low grade for theatrics.

The porch swing creaks under his weight and the chill breeze wicks against his skin and the glass shatters against the wooden boards when Ronan lets it drop because there they are, his hounds, muddy and bedraggled and limping. They run across the yard and up the steps and leap onto the swing, which rocks crazily and nearly dumps them all off on their asses. They lick his face with their hot tongues and slobber in his hair and jab him in the stomach with their paws, and Ronan laughs and cries until he can't tell the difference.

"You made it," Ronan says, burying his face in their fur, flinging his arms around their necks. "My brave boys. I'll never let you down again."

He sits up, eyes stinging, and pushes himself up off the swing. "Come, boys," Ronan says, and the dogs tangle about his feet but wait for their master instead of running on ahead. "I'm in the mood for a walk."

* * *

 **[ And that's it, folks! Thank you so much for everything! It's been a great run!]**


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